


If I Could Just Hold You

by IAmAVeronica



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Derek and Stiles are Mates, Dimension Travel, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg, Pseudo-Infertility Struggles, Think "Into the Woods" Meets "The Little Mermaid", Wishes, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:12:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 42,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3698675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmAVeronica/pseuds/IAmAVeronica
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is desperate to carry his husband's child, so he makes a deal with a witch. If he can seduce an alternate-universe version of Derek in a week, he can have his heart's desire and return to the world where Derek loves him, pregnant with Derek's baby. He figures it'll be easy. After all, he's been married to Derek for eight years. Even in a world where Derek doesn't know him yet, Stiles is sure he can win his mate's heart with time left over to spare.<br/>But Stiles forgets the first rule of dealing with witches: they can always find a loophole...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Stiles’s hands splay out on his stomach. “Derek,” he says in a whisper. “Feel it. He’s kicking.” 

His husband reaches around him to rub his thumb over the spot where a tiny foot is drumming under Stiles’s skin. “Oh, man,” Derek says. “Hiya, little guy.” At his father’s voice the baby keeps kicking, harder and harder. “He’s so energetic,” Derek laughs. “He’s just like you, babe.” 

“Hi, sweetheart.” Stiles bends his head down to get as close to his bump as possible. The baby is flipping inside of him, so alive. “Daddy and BaBa love you so so so much, baby. We can’t wait to meet you. You’re so perfect.” He sighs as his husband starts rubbing circles on his belly. There’s a very soft lullaby playing, a sweet, yearning sound. “Everything is so perfect…” 

“Stiles, wake up. Wake up.” 

Stiles blinks and the bright white nursery he’d just seen is gone, replaced by the inky blackness of his bedroom. Derek is leaning over him, eyes glowing in the dark. Stiles sniffles and reaches up to find tears on his face. 

“It’s okay, baby,” Derek says, brushing away Stiles’s tears. “You’re fine. You were just having a nightmare.” 

Stiles turns and burrows his head into his pillow, curling around his flat stomach. “No,” he says quietly. “I wasn’t.” 

# 

“Give me one more month to track down Cora,” Derek says. 

“She doesn’t want to be our surrogate, Der.” 

“She doesn’t have to. All she has to do is donate an egg, and we’ll use your sperm, and it’ll be as close to a biological baby as we can get.” 

“And some stranger will carry it.” Stiles slumps over his coffee. 

“This is the way it is,” Derek says, not unkindly. “You’re a man, babe. You can’t get pregnant. That’s just science.” 

“Thanks for the lecture, Mr. Harris.” Stiles sighs. “It’s not fair. Supernatural shit has fucked up our entire lives, but the one time I want to find magic that actually _helps_ us there’s nothing. Nothing!” 

“This is my fault. I should never have let you read all that fanfiction.” Derek sits down next to Stiles and takes a swig of his coffee. “You resent me for not having some biology-defying breeding knot,” he says with a straight face. 

“Seriously, why can’t you be that kind of werewolf?” Stiles tries to smile, but he can’t help but think that part of it _is_ Derek’s fault. Stiles had never wanted to be pregnant before he was mated, and Deaton thinks his sudden urges are probably a side effect. As a werewolf’s mate, he’s meant to carry on the line, and the fact that his body physically can’t is confusing to his new wolfy instincts. 

“Because they don’t exist. And, even if they did, how the hell could I knock you up anyway? My fictitious knot has nothing to do with your lack of a uterus, or birth canal, or breasts…” 

“Your werewolf magic would take care of all that.” 

“Right,” Derek says. “Silly me.” 

Stiles goes back to poking at his bacon moodily. Derek sighs and watches him for a minute before he says, “Adoption?” 

“I know there are a lot of kids out there who need a good home, and someday that’s probably what we’ll do. But right now it doesn’t help.” Stiles rubs at his eyes. “I don’t know, Der. I feel like I’m _supposed_ to be pregnant. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it’s just the way I feel. Like there’s this little baby waiting for us out there in the ether, and he doesn’t know what’s taking us so long. I feel like I’m failing him.” 

“Sweetheart.” Derek frames Stiles’s face with his hands. “ _He isn’t real_.” 

Stiles nods and closes his eyes. He can still hear the lullaby from his dream, floating through the window from some faraway place. 

# 

He’s slightly cheered up by the time everyone arrives for the weekly pack meeting. Lydia’s late, which is surprising, but they get underway quickly. After almost ten years together, the pack is strong. It’s getting stronger, too, with Scott and Kira’s three-year-old son Max already practicing a growl that signals the next Alpha has already been born and Erica seven months pregnant with her and Boyd’s first child. 

Derek and Stiles will never have a werewolf child. It’s doubtful that they’d be able to find a baby werewolf up for adoption, and Deaton already told them that for some reason the gene can’t be passed on through IVF. It dies if not fertilized immediately, so werewolf children can only be conceived naturally between mates. Stiles cuddles with Max on the couch, his dream just foggy enough in the back of his mind to make him a little sad as he playfully bares his teeth at the boy and listens to his growl. 

“We have some news,” Scott says after pleasantries are over. Kira looks up at him and grins, taking a step closer to him so Scott can put his hand over her stomach. 

Stiles knows instantly, and it feels like a punch in the gut, and that sucks, because Scott is his best friend and he should be happy for him. “We’re pregnant again!” Scott says. 

“Oh, yeah,” Erica says. “ _We._ ” 

“Congratulations,” Derek says, shaking Scott’s hand. Stiles has to grin at Derek’s formality before he hops off the couch and gives Scott a hug. “Way to go,” he says. 

Scott points at him. “Godfather, round two?” 

“Absolutely.” Stiles pulls Max back onto his lap. “You’re gonna be a big brother, Maxie!” 

“Yucky baby,” Max says in a tone of disgust. 

“Babies are cool!” Max rolls his eyes and Stiles laughs. “Okay, you’ve been spending way too much time with your Uncle Derek.” 

“I wanna live with you,” Max whines, pushing his nose into Stiles’s neck to scent him. “Not a dumb baby.” 

Stiles’s heart pinches. “I wish, buddy. Maybe we can have an uncle sleepover soon though, okay?” 

Max nods. 

The front door suddenly slams open and Lydia marches in. “Lydia Martin,” Erica scolds. “You’re late.” 

“I was out doing your work for you.” Lydia scowls around at everyone, only pausing to wink at Max. “Did _any_ of the werewolves notice a new presence in town this week, or were you all too busy looking in the mirror wondering where your eyebrows go when you shift?” 

Derek grumbles a little; Lydia’s never let them forget the two-week experiment they did trying to determine that very thing. “What are you talking about?” 

“There’s a Gemini witch in town.” Lydia sinks down onto a chair, looking a bit disgruntled when nobody gasps dramatically at her pronouncement. “A powerful one. Apparently she’s been granting wishes over near the high school for the past three days, but they’ve all had catches.” 

Derek shakes his head in disgust. Gemini witches, named because a wish can only be granted if a task proportional to the wish— it’s equal, or twin— is adequately performed, are notorious for their purposefully shady wish-granting. The wish must be worded just right or the witch will seize on any loophole and make the wisher pay for his folly. “Of course they do. How can anyone be so moronic as to actually trust a Gemini witch? How bad is it?” 

“Not too bad, yet. I don’t think she’s necessarily evil, just a menace.” 

“Does she know about us?” 

“I didn’t talk to her. I just spoke with some of the people she _helped_ and hurried over here once I had all the information. Right now she’s holed up in the woods by the lacrosse field— your old coach is guarding the entrance with a stick to keep anyone else from going in there.” Lydia rolls her eyes. “Apparently anyone with a _heart’s desire_ is drawn to hear by beautiful music no one else can hear. I didn’t hear anything.” 

“Because your life is perfect,” Erica snarks. 

Lydia smiles. “Exactly.” 

“We’ll kick her out tomorrow.” Derek looks around at everyone for confirmation. “Stiles and I will read up on Gemini witches tonight to make sure we don’t have another Ofori Vampire situation on our hands.” Everyone grimaces; they’d once tried to expel an Ofori from Beacon Hills without realizing an Ofori’s bite is toxic to werewolves. Stiles and Lydia had spent a frantic three days trying everything to save their friends before they finally learned that simple water did the trick. They’d all felt like major boners over that one. 

“I’ll take Kira and Maxie-Max home and then go relieve Finstock,” Scott says. 

“No!” Stiles says quickly. “We don’t want her to smell that there are werewolves in town. If Finstock hasn’t succumbed to her yet, he should be fine until tomorrow.” 

“I need to get something to eat, but I can go back over in like a half hour to help,” Lydia says. 

“Shower first so she won’t smell us on you,” Derek instructs. “That’s good thinking, Stiles. If she doesn’t know about us now, I don’t want her to find out.” He stands. “Let’s get home and start reading.” 

Stiles gives Max a goodbye kiss and joins Derek. “You go without me,” he says at the door, while behind him he hears Kira excitedly sharing her news with Lydia. “I remember the library had a book on Geminis.” 

“I’ll go with you.” 

“The library is too close to the woods.” Stiles stood on his tiptoes to peck Derek on the lips. “Go get the other books out and I’ll be home in forty-five.” 

“Be safe.” 

“Always.” Stiles hesitates, then gives Derek a deeper kiss, even chasing Derek’s tongue briefly. Derek hums in surprise and appreciation and encircles Stiles’s wrist with his hand, thumb rubbing over Stiles’s pulse the way he knows Stiles likes. Stiles breaks away reluctantly. “Love you.” 

“You too.” 

Stiles smiles at his husband and hurries down the driveway, forcing himself not to look back at Derek. When he gets on the main road he breaks into a jog. 

The lullaby he’s been hearing all day. He hasn’t been imagining it. It’s the Gemini’s song, luring him to her. He can feel it drawing him in, soothing him as it slowly becomes louder and louder, promising him that if he just keeps following the music all will be well. 

It’s not hard to sneak past Finstock at the entrance to the woods; all he has to do is chuck a rock and his former coach takes off running in the direction of the sound. The music builds to a crescendo as Stiles stumbles over brambles and past trees. “Hey!” he calls out, squinting through the midday gloom. “Can you hear me? Hello?” 

The music abruptly cuts off. The sudden silence actually hurts and Stiles almost whimpers. “Hello?” he tries again. “Please, I need to talk to you. Please?” 

A beautiful woman steps out from behind a tree. “Well, well,” she says in a sneer. “What on earth could a wolf’s mate want with me?” 

Stiles gulps. The Gemini is everything he would have expected her to be: cold in an ice-queen, unearthly way, staring at Stiles as if she knows everything about him with a single glance. “I have a wish,” he says weakly. It sounds completely pathetic. 

“So you do.” Her lips curls even further. “You want a _baby_. You want your wolf-man to breed you and stuff you full of a little werewolf cub. You want to get fat and have hemorrhoids and morning sickness and swollen feet, and be unable to go out in public for nine months lest you be taken to some lab for study.” She clicks her tongue. “I’ve heard some terrible wishes in my time, but yours is really something special.” 

Stiles doesn’t say anything. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. It's how he feels. 

“But, if it’s your wish…” she shrugs. “I’ll help you, if you’re sure it’s what you want. Is it?” 

“I’m mated to a werewolf,” Stiles says steadily. “I know how important passing on the line is to a werewolf. And it’s important to me too, now that I’m part of a werewolf pack. I want a child my mate can smell and know instinctively is ours. I want him to be able to hear its heartbeat start inside of me. I want to know my baby from the moment it’s conceived. And I want my baby to know, right inside the womb, that it’s more than part of a family. It’s part of a _pack_.” Stiles crosses his arms over his stomach. “That’s what I want. That’s my wish.” 

The witch studies him. “All right,” she says. “I’ll make you a deal.” 

Stiles exhales. “Name it.” 

“I’m going to send you to an alternate universe, where you can get pregnant, and you aren’t married to Derek. If you can still conceive Derek’s child in seven days, you can keep it.” 

“And if I can’t?” 

The witch shrugs, as if the risk is nothing of consequence. “You lose Derek,” she says casually. 

Stiles gapes at her. “What? No!” 

“It’s your choice, little breeding-wolf.” 

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. He won’t trade Derek for anything, not even for the chance to carry a baby. But how risky is it? Stiles knows his husband better than anyone in the world. He knows that Derek can’t resist when Stiles bares his neck and goes wild when Stiles just brushes the tips of his fingers over Derek’s cock. He knows how to make Derek laugh, which is the rarest trick in the world. Seven days to seduce his husband? He could do it in seven hours. Besides, even if he fails and comes back to a world where he isn’t mated to Derek anymore, he can just get Derek back. He’s kind of a Derek-expert, and he likes it that way. 

It’s a risk, yes...but what a reward he’ll get in exchange. 

“I have some conditions for the alternate universe,” Stiles says. This is where he closes any loopholes the witch might try and sneak through. 

The witch nods, looking almost appreciative to have a worthy opponent. “Fine, but you may only make demands of what cannot be, not what must be.” 

“Fair.” Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and thinks for a solid minute. “Okay, ready. Derek and I can’t be related in any way. I can’t be a woman, and Derek can’t be straight. Derek can’t be human, or a kid, or really old. And he can’t be married or dating anyone else. I don’t want to find out he’s engaged to Kate Argent or something ridiculous. And I can’t be married or dating anyone either. He can’t be in a coma or in another country where I can’t reach him easily. He can’t be physically unable to have sex.” Stiles thinks for another minute, then nods decisively. “Those are my terms.” 

The witch considers. “Granted,” she says finally. “But while he’ll still be a werewolf, he won’t recognize your scent. You won’t smell like his mate, since you won’t have taken his mating bite in this world.” 

“That’s fair.” Mating bite or no, Derek has always loved Stiles’s scent. He's sure that as soon as he meets Other-Derek for the first time, Derek will be captivated by Stiles's smell and beg to fuck him. 

“Seven days,” the witch reminds him. She’s got a little smile, unnerving him, but he pushes it aside. “Best of luck.” 

“Thank— ” 

The sky flashes a deep orange and she disappears. Stiles stumbles backwards and looks down at his hands. 

His wedding ring is gone. 

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Game on.” 

Stiles makes his way out of the woods, contemplating his next step. Hopefully Alternate-Derek is still living in the Hale house, so that has to be Stiles’s first stop. He imagines that Derek has no idea who Stiles is— probably nobody in Alternate-Beacon Hills will know him. He’ll have to show Derek that he’s not a threat; maybe claim the pack from Bethesda sent him. He can say that he needs a place to stay, and spend the night at Derek’s. Oh, that’s good. In the morning he’ll make his famous muffins Derek loves, and he’ll walk around the kitchen in just his T-shirt and briefs. 

Play his cards right and he’ll be knocked up within twenty-four hours. 

Stiles starts walking along the side of the road. Everything looks exactly the same. He wonders if the witch is watching him. Can she throw obstacles in his path, like Ursula in The Little Mermaid? He should have asked— 

A car horn beeps behind him, nearly making him jump out of his skin. He turns to see Scott sitting in the driver’s seat of his Taurus, waving at Stiles. 

“Dude! Why are you walking? Get iin!” 

So, Scott knows who he is. _Interesting._

Stiles climbs into the car. Scott’s still a werewolf; he can tell by his eyes. Max’s carseat is still strapped in the back of the car. It’s comforting, to see that everything is still the same. “Hey,” Stiles says. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Nothing. Long story. Hey, I kind of need you help with something.” Stiles pulls his seatbelt on. “Do you know a guy named Derek Hale?” 

Scott gives him a look. “Um…yes?” 

“You do? Awesome. Have you talked to him recently?” 

Scott snorts. “You mean since you broke his heart and he joined the seminary?” 

Stiles’s heart drops. 

That clever little witch. “The seminary?” he repeats slowly. 

“Yeah. What’s wrong with you? Derek’s been at St. Agnes ever since you broke off the engagement and he swore he would never look at you again.” Scott frowns at him. “Are you sick or something? You’ve basically been mortal enemies with Derek for the past three years.” 

Stiles thunks his head against the seat. 

That awful, clever, terrible little witch.


	2. Chapter 2

“Scott,” Stiles says. “I need you to listen to me really, really closely.” 

Scott sighs. “Oh, man. It’s only been a half-hour since the pack meeting. How could you have gotten yourself into trouble already?” 

“I’m not the Stiles you know.” 

Scott groans. 

“Listen to me. I’m from an alternate reality, okay?” Stiles frowns as his heart starts to race inexplicably. “I made a deal with a Gemini witch and she sent me here. Where I’m from, Derek and I are married. I have seven days to get him back.” 

Scott narrows his eyes at Stiles, then bursts out laughing. “Dude, when are you going to learn that you can’t trick a werewolf? I can hear your heartbeat!” 

“I…” Stiles grimaces as his heartrate slowly goes back to normal. _Fuck_. The witch must have done this so he couldn’t get help from any of his friends. “It’s true,” he tries, but his heart just starts revving up again, and if he keeps going he’ll probably give himself a heart attack and spend the week in the hospital. “Never mind,” he says, giving up. “Look, just drive me to St. Agnes, okay?” 

Scott shakes his head immediately. “Uh-uh. No way.” 

“Scott— ” 

“Look, man, I don’t know what’s up with you, but you and Derek don’t talk. _Ever._ I don’t think you’ve even said his name in, like, two and a half years. What’s going on?” 

“It’s a long story. You have to trust me on this.” Stiles sighs. “Can you please just be a bro and take me to Derek?” 

Scott considers him for a minute, then huffs and flips on his turn signal. “You’ll regret this.” 

Stiles watches the scenery blur past. Everything looks the same as it always has, and he wonders just what’s different in this reality. “Hey, Scott?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Let’s say that I hit my head and had amnesia that wiped out everything from, like, the past ten years. What would you want me to know? Like, if you were bullet-pointing my life, specifically when it came to Derek?” 

Now Scott looks genuinely worried. “Stiles, what’s going on? Seriously? Do you not remember Derek? You know me, right? Do you know _Max_? Kira?” 

“I know Max and you and Kira and everyone. But I don’t have all my memories. I don’t remember what happened between me and Derek.” Apparently that’s safe to say; his heartbeat stays steady. “Why did we break up?” 

Scott stares at him, horrified. “Dude, I have no clue. One day it was just over between you, and Derek was out of the pack. He had to stay in Beacon Hills to get his MD, or he would have gone Omega and lost it to the lone wolf madness. Trust me, we’ve all been wondering what the hell happened. He was totally lost on you for years, and then one day it was done, just like that.” 

The Catholic Church is almost ten minutes away. “Scott,” Stiles says, “Tell me everything you remember about my relationship with Derek.” 

# 

By the time they pull into the parking lot Stiles’s head is spinning, and he has to grab an Avengers notebook he finds under the passenger seat to take notes. “Dude, my son practices his letters in there,” Scott protests half-heartedly. 

“Max can’t even do _i_ yet, give me a break.” Stiles scribbles down everything Scott’s told him. Most of the differences, it seems, stems from the fact that Stiles is able to carry babies. The witch hadn’t just stuck him in a universe where he’s some kind of genetic freak— here he’s a born Gaia Mage, which means he can do _really_ powerful magic, as well as bear children. Stiles can’t help but be impressed by that; back home he’s only a Spark, which is, like, the absolute lamest kind of magic-doer. 

To hone his skills, Stiles had spent years training, which is why he and Derek hadn’t gotten married eight years ago, the way they had in his timeline. Only a few weeks before they were supposed to tie the knot, something had happened and Derek asked permission to leave the pack. When Scott went to go try and talk to him— “You wouldn’t say a word about what had happened, you just sat in your apartment and refused to come out”— Derek had shifted and gone for Scott’s throat. In the ensuing battle, Scott won, taking Derek’s Alphahood. 

“He _fought_ you?” 

“He let me win,” Scott says. “Which is insane. Pack was always so important to Derek.” 

“So you’re the Alpha of everyone now?” Stiles whistles. “Man, I bet Aiden and Ethan love that.” 

Scott stares at him blankly. “Who?” 

“Aiden! Ethan! Our packmates?” Stiles groans, suddenly realizing why Scott doesn’t recognize the names. Aiden and Ethan had been two twin Beta wolves Stiles and Derek had met on their _honeymoon_. They’d convinced the brothers to come back to Beacon Hills with them to make one strong pack. Aiden and Ethan had brought along their friend Liam. The trio weren’t particularly close with the rest of the pack— they almost never came to pack meetings— but they came in handy whenever Beacon Hills needed some muscle. “So, wait,” Stiles says. “Our pack is just you, me, Kira, Erica, Lydia and Boyd? We only have three werewolves?” 

“Four, with Max,” Scott protests. “Six, once the new babies are born!” 

“That’s not great.” 

“Don’t blame me. I didn’t break the heart of the most powerful werewolf to ever live.” 

“Right.” Stiles looks at the St. Agnes sign. “Here goes nothing. You can head home, if you want.” 

Scott snorts knowingly. “Yeah…something tells me I should stay.” 

“Whatever.” Stiles hops out of the car, then hesitates. “Before I go…” he closes his eyes and concentrates, hard. A pleasurable rushing feeling sweeps through him and when he opens his eyes Scotts clothes have been replaced with a long, frilly princess dress. Stiles bursts out laughing. 

“Dude, come on!” Scott protests. “We have a code!” 

Stiles shuts his eyes again and reverses the spell. “Holy shit,” he says. “I’m _awesome._ ” 

“Whatever.” Scott pouts as Stiles heads towards the church. “I can turn into a wolf whenever I want, but you don’t see me bragging.” 

# 

He finds Derek alone in a tiny side chapel, gently putting candles back in a box. Stiles hesitates at the back door, trying to figure out how to approach his husband, when suddenly Derek raises his head, sniffs, and spins around with a growl. 

Well, so much for the element of surprise. 

“Hey, you,” Stiles says, taking a cautious step forward. Derek looks exactly like he does back home, save for the white robe. 

Derek doesn’t move. His body radiates tension. “Get out.” 

“I want to talk to you.” Stiles stares at Derek’s collar and laughs awkwardly. “Man, I can’t believe how strange it is to see you in that.” He still has no idea why Derek would decide to become a priest— his Derek isn’t religious in the slightest, and Scott didn’t have a clue why Derek had fled to the church. 

“What on earth could you want to talk to me about?” Derek’s lips shrink back, just a little, enough to show his teeth. “Leave right now.” 

Stiles raises his hands to show he’s not a threat. Derek can never stay angry at Stiles when he makes his voice all soft, so Stiles drops his voice down into a purr. “I miss you.” 

“Stop it.” 

“Derek, I’m sorry for what I did.” 

It’s the wrong thing to say. Derek’s eyes flash a terrifying Beta blue. “ _Liar_.” 

_Fuck._ Of course his heartbeat registered it as a lie; Stiles has no idea what he’s even supposed to be sorry about. “I love you,” Stiles tries, figuring that could never be a lie. “I want to fix things.” 

“Get out.” 

“It’s been three years. Don’t you miss me? I miss you. I miss everything about you.” 

Derek just shakes his head and slams another candle into the box. “Is this just a joke to you?” he asks woodenly. “Trying to seduce a priest? Or you just figured you could come in here to pour some salt into the wound?” He snorts in derision. “Nothing matters as long as Stiles is happy, right?” 

That stings more than it should, and Stiles reacts the way he always does: with sarcasm. “I’m obviously so happy right now, Derek.” 

“Don’t say my name.” 

Stiles smiles, still searching for his angle in. “Do you miss the way I used to call you Der-Bear?” 

Derek growls warningly. 

This conversation isn’t going at all how Stiles wanted, but he’s never been a quitter. “You’re right, I’m being shitty. You’re going to be a priest, right? Well, I have a confession, Father Hale.” He takes a deep breath and softens his voice again. “I love you. I want to drag you out of this cold little stone chapel and cuddle with you in front of a fireplace. I want to be your husband. I want to have your little werewolf babies. I— ” 

Derek snarls and Stiles jumps back, staring in horror at the man in front of him. At Stiles’s words, Derek had almost _shifted._ Stiles has never, ever seen his husband lose control like that. A werewolf shifting out of anger is one of the most dangerous creatures in the world. Stiles is honestly terrified, his heart jackrabbiting in his chest in a way that would have had _his_ Derek running to him in an instant to see what’s wrong. This Derek, however, is glaring at him with pure hatred in his eyes. “How dare you,” he growls out, past teeth that have elongated into fangs. “How _dare_ you say that to me.” 

“I’m sorry,” Stiles whispers. He can’t breathe, he’s so scared. Every instinct is telling him to run out the door, away from this predator. 

“You selfish, terrible, evil little shit.” Derek’s voice is poisonous and Stiles flinches at each syllable. “I can’t believe I ever loved you.” 

Now that the adrenaline rush is over tears prick his eyes. This is the voice of his husband, saying these awful things to him. Derek is always so hard to the rest of the world, but never to Stiles. _Never._

“Get out,” Derek says again. Stiles can see his claws biting into his palms, as if the effort to keep from tearing Stiles apart is painful. 

“I’m going.” Stiles backs away, afraid to turn away from Derek and make himself vulnerable. Derek watches every step with narrowed eyes. At the door, Stiles breathes a sigh of relief and turns to leave. 

“Stiles?” Derek’s voice is horrifically cold. “If you ever come back here, I’ll kill you.” 

Stiles doesn’t have to be a werewolf to know that he’s telling the truth. 

# 

Scott looks almost sorry when Stiles stumbles down the stairs to the car. “So,” he says awkwardly, jamming the key in the admission. “I guess an ‘I told you so’ isn’t really appropriate right now?” 

Stiles shakes his head in disbelief. “Scotty, he hates me.” 

“I know.” 

“What the hell happened to us?” 

“Trust me, we wish we knew.” Scott puts a hand on Stiles’s shoulder. “You want me to take you home?” 

Stiles bites his lip. “Where’s home?” he asks in a small voice. 

“Your apartment, Stiles. Over on Parker Drive?” Scott winces when Stiles looks like he might cry— the idea of going _home_ to the empty apartment of someone who might as well be a stranger sounds awful right now. “You want to come to my place?” Scott asks quickly. “Max is still dealing with the idea of being a big brother; I think he could use some Uncle Stiles time.” 

Stiles nods and forces a smile. “That sounds great.” 

Scott quickly puts the car into gear and zooms out of the parking lot. Stiles cranes his head to watch the church disappear, wondering if Derek is watching them go. Somehow he doubts it. 

It’s so stupid, but Stiles can’t believe he much he misses his husband right now. Derek is a good mate, completely attuned to Stiles’s emotions. Whenever Stiles is upset about something, no matter how tiny, Derek is always the first responder, pulling Stiles in for a cuddle and planting little kisses all up Stiles’s neck and gently but firmly telling him how they’re going to fix whatever the problem is. Even in a body without Derek’s mating bite, Stiles is yearning for his mate’s touch, half-expecting Derek to just swoop in and take care of him. Derek is always there for the people he loves. 

And that, Stiles reminds himself, is what’s going to make him such a good father. That’s the whole reason Stiles is doing this: to give _his_ Derek a family. He’s not giving up. 

This game is just beginning. 

# 

Stiles can hear Scott telling Kira about Stiles’s selective memory loss in the kitchen while Stiles plays with Max on the floor of the living room. Max is a superhero nut, largely thanks to Stiles’s influence, and right now his method of coping with the baby news is pretending his parents are just giving him his own sidekick. Stiles patiently takes on the role of Baby-Man (Max is not a great namer at three and a half) while Super-Max saves his toys from world domination. 

Kira comes in and sits down next to Stiles. “Do you want me to talk to my mom?” she asks softly, while Max smashes two GI Joes into each other. “She might have something that can help you.” 

Stiles shakes his head and smiles at her. “Trust me, I’m totally fine.” 

She looks unconvinced, but bends down to pick up Max. “Okay, superhero. Time to go fight cavities.” 

Max pouts, but he blows Stiles a kiss. “Love you, Uncle!” he shouts. 

“Love you too, buddy!” Stiles gives Max a goodbye hug and watches Kira carry the boy upstairs. “I needed that,” he says to Scott, standing behind him. 

“He’s kind of the best, right?” 

“Absolutely.” Stiles starts to turn away when a picture on the fireplace catches his eye. Frowning, he walks over and picks up one of the frames. “Why do you have this out?” he asks, unable to keep the disgust from his voice. 

“Huh?” Scott walks over to see. “Why wouldn’t we? I know it’s been a while, but we miss him.” 

“Are you serious?” Stiles glares down at the image of Peter Hale smiling out at him. Peter Hale was Derek’s uncle. When Derek had been twelve, he’d lost most of his family in a house fire— everyone except Peter and two of his sisters, Laura and Cora. Only a few years after the fire, Laura had been mysteriously killed, making Derek an Alpha, and soon after Cora ran away, leaving Peter as Derek’s only family. 

It was Peter who had turned Scott, Erica, and Boyd, trying to make a strong pack, and while he apologized later Stiles had never trusted him. For years Stiles had quietly investigated Peter. Three years ago he’d finally discovered the truth: it was Peter who had killed Laura, hoping that it would make him the Alpha, and Peter who had run Cora out of town so Derek wouldn’t have any allies. Peter had turned Stiles’s friends in the hopes of making werewolves who were only loyal to him, to help him kill Derek. 

Before Stiles could tell Derek what he’d learned, Peter had kidnapped Stiles and taken him to the catacombs under Beacon Hills. Derek had tracked his scent and gotten to them just in time. In the ensuing fight, Derek had been forced to kill his uncle. It had completely devastated him, but the only thing Derek could never forgive was someone hurting his family. 

Nobody talked about Peter Hale anymore. It’s like he never even existed. 

“He’s part of the pack,” Scott says now, taking the picture out of Stiles’s hands. “Even if he never comes back.” 

“Comes back?” Stiles frowns. “Scott, what happened to Peter?” 

“You don’t remember this either?” 

“Just tell me.” 

“He disappeared.” Scott gently puts the picture back in place. “Three years ago. Me and Kira were on our babymoon, and when we got back, he was just gone. You said he left and didn’t say where he was going, but…” Scott’s eyes widen. “Shit, I forgot. That’s also when you and Derek broke up. We got back into town and it was like a bomb had gone off or something.” 

“We broke up just when Peter disappeared?” 

Scott nods. 

Stiles stares at the picture. Every other change in this timeline stemmed from Stiles being a mage, but not this one. Peter still should be dead in this timeline, and if he’s not, Stiles can’t help but think that’s important. 

Whatever went wrong between Stiles and Derek— it all comes back to Peter Hale. 

Stiles smiles. Just like that, he has a game plan.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a hardcore bum and I haven't updated in forever, I know. Please accept this extra-long, ridiculously twisty chapter as an apology!

Stiles ends up crashing on Scott’s couch, Avengers notebook clenched in his hand. He wakes early and stumbles into the kitchen, still completely exhausted, thinking he’ll start a pot of coffee for Scott and Kira. 

Kira is already in the kitchen, bracing herself against the counter and looking wan. “Don’t even think about it,” she says when Stiles’s eyes flick over to the coffeepot. 

Stiles winces. He forgot that Kira— health-conscious even when she isn’t gestating new life— won’t be having coffee for the duration of her pregnancy. When she was carrying Max, the little guy had helped her kick the habit by making her brutally sick at even the smell. “Morning sickness already?” 

“Not terrible, but it’ll get there.” Kira sighs. “Scott can smell when I’m getting sick, so I snuck down here to give him a few more hours of sleep.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

Kira pats her stomach absent-mindedly. “It’s worth it.” 

“Yeah.” Stiles stares at her belly. Assuming all goes well, his kid will be just a few months younger than Scott and Kira’s. They’ll be best friends, just like Scott and Stiles growing up. The thought is enough to kick him into gear, and he grabs a water bottle from the fridge. “I’m heading home,” he tells Kira. “Tell Scott thanks for last night.” 

“Are your memories back?” 

“No, but it’s honestly fine. Don’t worry about it.” Stiles stops and frowns. “Actually…do you know my address? I can’t remember it.” 

Kira’s eyebrows shoot up, but she nods to the fridge. “It’s on the babysitter’s list of contacts.” 

“Thanks.” Stiles scribbles it down in his Avengers notebook. “Oh, hey,” he says, staring at where he’s written _Peter Hale???_ “Cora Hale.” 

“What about her?” 

“Is she still around here?” 

Kira shakes her head. “She came back about four years ago to join our pack, but she ran out of town only a month later, without any warning. She left a note for Derek telling him she wasn’t interested in pack life and she was starting over with like-minded wolves somewhere out-of-state. We haven’t heard from her since.” 

“Great, thanks.” That’s exactly what happened in his timeline. Cora had decided to leave only a few weeks before Stiles had uncovered Peter’s secret. The one-two punch of losing his uncle _and_ his sister had completely devastated Derek. Stiles scribbles in his notebook _Peter with Cora??? Formed new pack?_

“Will you at least talk to Deaton?” Kira asks him. “We’re worried about you, Stiles.” 

Stiles smiles fondly at his quasi-sister-in-law. “Okay, Kira-belle,” he says, humoring her. It’s nice to be cared about, especially when he’s not even in his own world. “I promise, I’ll be fine.” 

Her eyebrow stays raised, but she accepts his kiss on the cheek and waves him out the door. 

# 

By the time Stiles reaches his apartment, the sun is just starting to crest over the hills in the distance. He’s on the top floor of a depressingly dark building, and it takes him several minutes to slot four different keys into their correct locks, flip a deadbolt, _and_ do a fingerprint scanner that looks massively out-of-place in this cheap complex. Other-Stiles is _paranoid_. 

But as soon as the door swings open, Stiles realizes why. He whistles as he looks around at the place. There’s a grimoire splayed open on his table, what looks like an honest-to-God cauldron pushed into the corner of the kitchen, and in the middle of the living room…something. Something definitely magical, but completely incomprehensible. He approaches it gingerly. It’s got a long, thin pewter base, rising about five feet in the air. At the top is a wide standing circle, and inside the circle is what looks almost like a bubble, stretching to fill the entire thing. It’s shimmery and muted and gives off the slightest hum. He sort of wants to touch it, to see if it would pop or if his hand would just go all the way through, but he doesn’t have the _slightest_ clue what it is or what it’s doing, so he figures it’s best to leave it alone. 

The walls are completely bare, and there’s no television or gaming console or even any of Max’s toys strewn around. It looks more like some evil warlock’s lair than an apartment. This doesn’t feel like the kind of place Stiles would ever live. Stiles is a homey, personable kind of guy. His house with Derek is filled with pictures and keepsakes, and the idea that Other- Stiles doesn’t have any pictures he would want to look at every day is incomprehensible. 

What kind of asshole _is_ he, in this world? 

Stiles shakes off the thought. He wants to explore the place for clues, then get to tracking down Peter Hale. The grimoire will help. Stiles has a lot of natural magic in his body, but not a lot of know-how. It’s one thing to point at his friend’s clothes and picture a princess dress, but another to focus his magic enough to actually locate someone he hasn’t seen in years. 

He turns towards the bedroom, which looks just as impersonal as the living room, and is just about to start searching inside when there’s a knock on the door. 

With a sigh, Stiles flips all the deadbolts and cracks the door open. “Hi, Deaton,” he says resignedly. Of course Kira called Deaton for him, well aware Stiles had no plans to seek his help. Stiles should have known. 

Beacon Hills’s resident vet, magic practitioner, and know-it-all gives Stiles one of his small inscrutable smiles. “You remember me?” 

“Of course I do.” Stiles steps aside to let Deaton in. Deaton doesn’t seem fazed by the various magical accoutrements, although he does give the magic bubble a good eyeballing. “What did Kira tell you?” 

“That you were having very extreme yet selective memory loss, and appeared completely unconcerned about it.” 

“It’s honestly nothing to worry about.” Stiles eyes Deaton speculatively. Hell, Deaton isn’t a wolf. He can’t hear Stiles’s heartbeat. “Look, the truth is that I’m from an alternate universe, and I was sent here to fix things between this Stiles and Derek.” It’s so weird. He _knows_ that he’s teling the truth, and yet his brain is screaming at him that he’s lying. “ I don’t remember things that didn’t happen in my timeline. That’s all there is to it.” 

Deaton looks him over. “Hm.” 

“What, you don’t believe me?” 

Deaton reaches out and presses two fingers to the pulse in Stiles’s neck, making him squawk. “You didn’t blink once while saying that, you placed your left hand over your mouth, and your breathing accelerated, as did your pulse. All signs that you weren’t telling the truth.” 

Stiles gnashes his teeth. It figured that Deaton was a human lie detector. “Can’t you just believe me on this?” 

“No.” Deaton says simply. “I cannot.” 

Stiles blinks. Sure, Deaton is a logical guy, but he’s also Stiles’s friend. He’s almost always been willing to trust Stiles. “Why not?” 

“I think you’re involved in something dangerous again, and I want to know what it is, for the good of my town.” Deaton crosses his arms and scowls, and Stiles can’t believe it, but he almost looks _ferocious._ “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to force it out of you?” 

Stiles stares at him, open-mouthed. “I have no idea what you mean,” he manages to say finally. “Something dangerous, _again_? What did I do?” He looks at the grimoire, suddenly feeling like it’s something sinister. “Deaton, am I…am I _dark_? Am I a bad guy, or what?” 

Something about his question— probably the earnest, desperate way he asked it— has Deaton relaxing. “You honestly don’t remember?” 

“No. I really don’t. But you have to tell me.” If this Stiles is evil, or he drove Derek away because of something to do with his magic, Stiles has to know. It’s the only way he can fix things. 

Deaton sighs and takes a seat on Stiles’s couch. “I never had any proof of this,” he starts warningly. “Frankly, I’ve been trying to figure it out for a long time.” 

“Tell me what you know and I’ll try to help.” Stiles takes a seat next to Deaton. It’s almost eight o’clock. Back home Stiles would be heading off to work, but he has a feeling that he’s made magic his full-time profession here. 

“Three years ago you came to my clinic in the dead of night,” Deaton tells him. “You were frantic. Covered in blood. You begged me to tell you what I knew about the darkest kind of magic— the kind I would never teach you. You wanted to know if it was possible to raise someone from the dead.” Stiles jerks, seeming to satisfy Deaton in believing that Stiles honestly didn’t remember what he was talking about. “I told you that that was something far, far beyond your magical abilities, and then you changed course. You wanted to know about creating doppelgängers.” 

Stiles knows he’s heard that word before, but he can’t place it. “What’s that?” 

Deaton’s eyes slide away. “I’m not sure I should tell you.” 

“Deaton, come on.” 

“Suffice to say that it’s beyond your abilities,” Deaton says firmly. “It’s terrible, dark magic, and you have no business messing with it. You’d be unable to do a spell that large, what with your energies going towards _that_.” He jerks his head at the magic bubble. 

“What _is_ that thing?” 

“A barrier spell.” Deaton stands and approaches it. “It’s a constant enchantment, like a lightbulb that’s always switched on. You’ve had it enacted for a few years now. It constantly draws on your magic as a source of energy. It keeps _something_ out of Beacon Hills but I’m not sure what, exactly, you’re trying to keep away.” 

Stiles joins him. “Can we shut it down?” 

“Without you remembering why you started it? I wouldn’t recommend that. I assume you have it for a good reason. You…trouble me sometimes, Stiles, but I do have faith in you.” Deaton puts a hand on his shoulder. “Will you let me run a few tests, even if you won’t tell me what’s caused your memory loss?” 

Stiles is really going to have to come up with a way of getting everyone off his back. “Give me a couple days, okay? I promise I’m not involved in anything dangerous. In a little while, everything should be solved. Better than it was before.” 

Deaton holds eye contact with him for a few seconds before nodding. “Please don’t do anything stupid.” 

Stiles grins. “I never do.” 

Deaton leaves with the assurance that Stiles can call him if he needs any gaps in his memory filled in. He also makes Stiles promise to hold off on any intense magic spells. “Frankly, I’ve suspected for a while that you might have other constant enchantments in this town besides the barrier spell,” he warns. “Your abilities have shrunk so greatly in the past few years that I can only assume your spells are taking too much energy. That’s a dangerous state for a young mage.” 

“I promise.” Stiles shuts the door behind him and deadlocks it again. 

Time to start exploring 

# 

An hour later, Stiles is almost ready to admit defeat. He’s been through every inch of the apartment and he hasn’t found anything more personal than his boxer briefs. No diary, no notebooks— even the search history on his computer has been wiped since its last use. 

He slams his sock drawer shut in frustration, deciding to read through the grimoire and see if he can find a locator spell, and hears a dull thunk coming from the back of his chest of drawers. 

He opens and closes the drawer again experimentally. There’s another thud. 

Interesting. 

He pulls the sock drawer all the way out and peers inside the empty slot. There’s something there. It looks like someone’s carved out a little cave into the interior of the chest and placed an item inside the hollowed space. He sticks his hand in and gets ahold of a box. 

Fucking finally. He knew there had to be something of value in this apartment. 

It takes some maneuvering to get it out, but in a few minutes he’s sitting there holding a small, very dusty wooden box. Thankfully it isn’t locked and Stiles opens it almost greedily. 

Everything inside is wrapped in a colored silk squares. Stiles recognizes them immediately from his time wedding planning. They’re all various shades of blue and soft as kittens. It's the silk used for the bridesmaids dresses. Kira had hand-sewn them and sent him the leftover fabric. He had it saved in his mom’s old hope chest. 

This Stiles had apparently found a different use for it. 

Stiles grabs the smallest bundle and unwraps it. A gold chain falls out and Stiles swallows, taken aback as he holds the chain up. 

His wedding ring. 

Men don’t normally wear engagement rings, but Derek and Stiles had decided to buy their weddings rings at the time they became engaged and wear them on chains around their necks until the wedding day. This is definitely it, and that's the chain he had used--back home he still has his chain tucked away in that hope chest upstairs. Stiles rubs the ring gently between his thumb and index finger, resisting the urge to slip it on. 

So Other-Stiles had kept the ring. Maybe he’d actually cared for Derek. Or maybe he’d kept it around in case he could use it in a spell down the road. Honestly, Stiles’s view of Other-Stiles has seriously dimmed since his talk with Deaton. 

It’s what’s in the next bundle that turns Stiles’s world upside-down. 

A pregnancy test. 

A _positive_ pregnancy test. 

Stiles lifts it out with fingers shaking. He’d dreamed about holding a positive pregnancy test for years, but actually doing it is a kick in the gut since he knows full well there’s no baby inside of him. He touches his thumb to the plus sign and swallows hard. 

Other-Stiles had been pregnant. 

Nobody’s mentioned a baby to him once since he’s ended up here, so he can only assume that the baby had never been born. God, he can’t even imagine. Unless…unless Other-Stiles hadn’t wanted to be pregnant. 

Stiles shudders, a terrible thought wrapping dark little tendrils around his mind. Wouldn’t the witch just _love_ that irony? Sending Stiles to a universe where he desperately hadn’t wanted to be pregnant at all? 

Is that what ruined his relationship with Derek? _How dare you say that to me_ , Derek had snarled, right after Stiles had said he wanted to have Derek’s babies. That, above all else, had been what set him off. 

Stiles knows that _his_ Derek is a feminist and firmly believes in a woman’s right to choose— he’s always said that you can’t grow up in a house full of sisters and not support woman’s rights. But if _this_ Derek is a Catholic, maybe things are different. Besides, Stiles remembers how Scott had bonded with Max in utero. He could smell the baby within weeks of his conception. If Stiles had terminated his pregnancy, Derek would already have accepted the baby as pack. 

Derek is half wolf. If someone hurt one of his cubs, born or unborn… 

The only thing Derek can’t forgive is someone hurting his family. 

For the first time, Stiles actually feels angry at Derek. If that’s what really happened, it isn’t fair. Stiles isn’t some stranger, coming in to take away an entrenched pack member. Stiles is Derek’s _mate_ , and he has the right to make choices for his own body. To hate Stiles, just because he wasn’t ready to have a baby? To threaten to _kill_ him? Maybe Other-Stiles wasn’t the bad guy here after all. 

But if Stiles had terminated the pregnancy, why would he have kept the test so lovingly wrapped? 

Stiles sighs and wraps the test back up. Everything he finds raises ten more questions than it answers. 

The last wrapped item is another, smaller box, with a sticky note on top: _For Derek, when the time is right._

Interesting. 

This one is locked, and Stiles isn’t in the mood to hunt around for his keys. He places his fingers on the box and concentrates. That heady rush sweeps through him, and, with a powerful feeling of release, the lid springs open. Stiles grins in triumph, but a wave of dizziness overtakes him and he has to lean back and close his eyes. Deaton wasn’t kidding. Stiles is _weak_ for a mage. From now on, he’s sticking to transmutation— transforming one object into another. Changing Scott’s clothes yesterday hadn’t made him feel nearly this awful. 

There are three items in the box for Derek. The first is a small egg-shaped item with the same shimmery bubble-look as the barrier spell. When he holds it up to his ear he can hear a faint, high-pitched hum. Obviously magical. He gives it an experimental shake, but nothing happens. 

Next. 

He groans with relief when he picks up something easy. A flash drive, simple and black and completely unremarkable. He left his laptop on the bed when he was checking the search history, and he pulls it down to plug the flash drive in. 

The computer freezes for a minute and then flashes up a screen: **Password >** Five spaces appear under it, signaling a five-letter password. 

He sighs and tries DEREK. 

Nothing. 

12345 

Nope. 

MAXIE. 

He tries his birthday. Derek’s birthday. His childhood dog’s name. 

Nothing. 

“Jesus Christ, Stiles,” he says aloud. “Give me one fucking break, will you?” 

There’s only one thing left in the box. He’s almost afraid to look. It’s a single folded sheet of paper with a set of numbers written on it. For a minute he has no idea what it means, and then, with incredible relief, he realizes what it is. 

Latitude and longitude coordinates. 

Derek had insisted the pack learn latitude and longitude years ago, as a way to communicate in a crisis without letting the enemy know exactly where they’ll be. It takes a few minutes of concentration, but Stiles quickly pinpoints exactly where these coordinates are leading: the wooded area near the underground caves. 

That’s right near where Peter took him when he was kidnapped. 

Stiles grabs his phone and his keys. First a quick lunch to replenish the energy he lost with that stupid lock-cracking spell. He’s going to head right to where these coordinates lead, then give his friend Danny a call to see if he can hack into the flash drive. Everything is going great. 

He still has six days to go. 

# 

He gets lost a few times, but he finally reaches the designated spot. He hasn’t been here since his kidnapping and for a second he shudders, remembering how scared he had been of Peter and how certain he had felt that he was going to die. 

He could really use a cuddle from his husband right now, but he shakes it off and focuses on the task at hand. 

What is he supposed to find here? 

A cairn of rocks, obviously piled by a human hand, catches his eye. He walks over to the plot of mud where they’re stacked and gives them a kick. 

Nothing’s in the rocks. 

Something’s buried underneath them, of course. 

Stiles sighs hugely. He can either transmute a large stick into a shovel, risking the magic overuse-backlash, or he can dig with his hands. He had to dig a grave by hand for a harpy once, and his hands had been useless for, like, a whole month. 

“Nothing’s ever easy,” he mutters as he hunts for a suitable stick. 

# 

Ten minutes later his shovel strikes something hard and Stiles drops to his knees. He reaches into the hole, grabs what he’s found, and pulls. 

Oh, shit. _Shit_. 

It’s a bone. A fucking human bone. 

What else would be buried way out here in the woods, with a makeshift cairn over it? He should have realized, but he hadn’t thought Other-Stiles would be so sadistic to lead Derek on a treasure hunt for _this_. Stiles drops the bone in disgust. What a fucking waste of time. These bones can’t tell him anything. Whoever’s buried here has been dead for a _while_. 

He’s just getting ready to leave when he sees something else winking in the hole he’s dug. With another put-upon sigh, he tugs the glittering thing out and holds it up, expecting more disappointment. 

His entire body freezes. 

Unable to move the hand holding what he’s found, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out his phone, and dials with one hand. Deaton picks up after only one ring. 

“Stiles?” 

“Deaton.” Every heartbeat is a dull blow in his chest. “Tell me what a doppelgänger is.” 

“I already said— ” 

“Deaton, _tell me_.” 

Deaton hesitates, then relents. “It’s a carbon-copy of someone who has been killed. It’s a terrible, terrible thing, Stiles. You need a sacrifice, a living relative of the deceased. They _become_ the doppelgänger, but it never works the way people think it will. The doppelgänger is trapped between two identities— the person whose memory has been resurrected, and the person whose soul has been massacred. It will look like your loved one, and have the memories of your loved one, but it will be angry and forever unsettled. It will hate that which it once loved and forever seek some kind of remedy for its tortured soul. Its existence is futile and a blight on the world." He pauses. "Do you understand why I cautioned you against it?” 

Stiles nods jerkily. “Yeah,” he says, voice hoarse. “I understand.” 

He drops the phone without saying goodbye and stares in silent horror at what he’s uncovered. There, at the end of the gold chain blinking and twisting in the sunlight, is his husband’s wedding ring.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The word "doppelganger" is one of those words that sound weirder and weirder the more you say/type it and I'm pretty sure it's used like 500 times in this chapter and right now I'm just chanting it over and over because of how weird it sounds like I'm a confused witch performing some very strange ritual.  
> Also, please enjoy this chapter!

“Hey!” Stiles shouts into the empty woods one more time. “I know you can hear me!” He smacks a branch against a tree trunk in frustration. “I need to talk to you!” 

The Gemini witch doesn’t appear in front of him and Stiles slumps down to his knees, right next to the unearthed bones. He doesn’t know what to do next, but he knows what he wants to do. He wants to carefully dig out these bones, one by one, and bury them with the rest of Derek’s family, and then curl up in a ball somewhere and cry his eyes out. 

Because it has to be Derek buried here. Stiles had thought at the church that it _couldn’t_ be his husband yelling at him and threatening his life, and he should have trusted that instinct. Of course it wasn’t Derek. Derek has been here, all alone in the ground, while a tortured imitation of him has been seeking a spiritual remedy he will never find. 

The thought that he’s kneeling next to the remains of Derek is making Stiles feel so physically ill he almost can’t breathe. He knows this isn’t _his_ world; this isn’t _his_ Derek. But he can picture so clearly what must have happened in this timeline three years ago: 

Peter kidnapped Stiles and brought him to the caves. Derek tracked them and burst in to save Stiles. And then one thing changed from what Stiles remembers. Maybe Stiles had tried to cast a spell that went wrong. Maybe Stiles had been pregnant then, and Derek had been too distracted in his fight with Peter. Whatever had happened, it had ended with Derek’s death. 

And Other-Stiles had found a way to bring him back. Stiles knows that has to be what happened, because he knows that if his Derek died, and Stiles could bring him back, he would do it. Even if it was wrong, or hurt someone else. Ever since Stiles fell in love with Derek, he’s tortured himself with thoughts of losing him. Derek is a _werewolf_ , and near-death scenarios are practically his average Tuesday. Someday his luck is going to run out, and Stiles will never, ever be ready. 

If Stiles is being honest with himself, that’s part of the reason why he wants Derek’s child so badly. As an Alpha’s mate, he’s meant to carry on the line, create a tiny miniature of his husband. Derek will never _really_ be gone then, and Stiles will never have to be alone. 

But his current plan to get pregnant isn’t going to work out, because he can’t exactly conceive a baby with a pile of bones. 

Stiles hurls his stick into the woods, aching with frustration. “Gemini!” he yells again. “You _cheated!_ I want out!” 

There’s a tiny cough from behind him and he spins around to see the Gemini leaning casually against a tree, arms folded. “You rang?” she asks, voice heavy with sarcasm. 

“Yeah.” Stiles stands and points at the bones. “One of our conditions was that Derek couldn’t be _physically unable_ to have children. I figured out your little trick. That priest at the church isn’t Derek.” 

She raises an eyebrow, completely unconcerned. “Hm. Certainly looks like Derek to me.” 

“It’s Peter Hale, isn’t it? I…or, the other me, or whatever…tried to _turn_ Peter into Derek, but it backfired, and he hates me now. That’s a doppelgänger, not Derek, and that violates our rules.” 

Now the witch’s lips curl up in a tiny, cruel smile. “Well, well. You’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? _If_ you’re right, I’m afraid I don’t see an issue. He looks like Derek, sounds like Derek…I’m quite sure his sperm will carry Derek’s DNA, to get down to the bones of it.” The witch’s eyes flicker down to the makeshift grave. “Whoops. No insensitivity intended.” 

“I don’t care if he looks like Derek,” Stiles says through clenched teeth. “I don’t even care if he has Derek’s memories. I’m not having Peter Hale’s baby. I want a child with my husband, that’s the whole reason I’m doing this.” 

“It didn’t bother you before,” the witch snaps. “No matter what, you won’t be conceiving with _your_ husband, will you? He’s back in your world, and you’re going to come home happily knocked up with a baby _he_ didn’t pump into you. You don’t like the way you have to do it? Fine. Don’t do it. But then you lose.” 

Stiles shuts his eyes. He’d never thought about it like that before, but the witch has a point. Is it still cheating if you’re having sex with an alternate-universe version of your husband? The thought practically gives him a nosebleed. “Look,” he says, giving up that line of analysis, “You know that you made this too hard. It was implied in our contract that Derek actually had to be _Derek_. You created an impossible task, and I want out.” 

The witch springs upright, eyes blazing. “Don’t you dare accuse me of giving you an impossible task. You think this is all a game, don’t you? This is the only way I get to keep _existing_. I’m bound by the laws of magic to create tasks that are equal to your pathetic wishes. Yes, they’re difficult. They’re meant to be. My kind was created to show humans the folly of dabbling in magic, and every task a human manages to complete is a black mark against me in the eyes of all other Gemini witches. But as much as I wish I could, I can’t make them impossible, or I’ve defeated my own purpose and I cease to exist.” 

“Oh, cry me a fucking river!” Stiles has heard the boo-hoo-my-magical-life-is-so-hard speech from more villains than he can count. “You created a world where I had to dig up my own husband’s skeleton, then tell me I have to go have sex with his uncle? How long did it take you to come up with that shit, you nutjob?” 

She gets in his face. “I didn’t create anything, you ignorant little twit. I found a universe that met your specifications. There are thousands of millions of parallel worlds to the one you know, and, I assure you, there are many _far_ worse than this one. You want the task to be over? Fine. But the deal was that if you don’t succeed, you lose your husband.” She suddenly calms and leans back, smiling, and the smile is far worse than her anger. “You were so specific about everything else, but not about that. All I said was that you lose your Derek, and there are so many ways I could fulfill that promise, aren’t there? I could make you stay here forever, or I could send you home but give your husband a quick, nasty death while he waits for you to return …an aneurysm, perhaps? If I’m feeling kind, I won’t even let him know it’s all your fault…” 

Fear like Stiles has never known licks at his throat. “No,” he stammers. “God, please no.” 

“You don’t want to quit?” 

He shakes his head. Fuck, he was so, so stupid to do this. He risked the best thing in his life on a gamble with the most notoriously tricky being in existence, and there’s no way out. “I’ll find a way to complete your task. And I’m sorry for insulting you. It’s just…” he almost chokes. “That’s Derek, buried there. I’m a little freaked out.” 

She studies him for a minute, expression softening. “Things aren’t always as bad as they appear,” she says finally. “Don’t assume you know everything.” She pauses again, and for a minute Stiles hopes she’s going to give him some real advice. Then her eyes harden again and she simply says, “You have exactly six days left.” 

She disappears without even a single poof of smoke. Stiles clenches Derek’s ring in his hands and looks down in the grave. He has two options. He can either try to bring Derek back to life, or he can find some way to soothe and seduce the doppelgänger. Neither option sounds particularly appealing, or frankly even remotely possible, but now that he knows what he stands to lose he can’t bear to think of giving up. 

He leans down and places his hand on the earth. He’s still clutching Derek’s ring. He can’t bring himself to bury it again, and he instead stuffs it in his pocket. “I’ll come back for you,” he promises the bones. He blinks back sudden tears, imagining himself burying Derek out here in the dead of night, frantic and alone. He’d assumed that the witch had just conjured up their world, backstories and all, out of thin air, but it sounds as if it’s just as real as Stiles’s world. A real Stiles lost a real Derek, and that’s just fucking heartbreaking. 

A single tear falls onto the dirt, and Stiles sniffles before he covers the bones with loose earth, stands, and slowly makes his way out of the woods. 

# 

On his way home, he passes the Beacon Hills Cemetery. Not quite ready to face his apartment again, he slips inside and makes his way to the Hale family plot. It’s a windless, quiet day, and he can see a burial taking place up the hill. No matter how many times he comes here he always feels unsettled, as though a hand is going to pop up from the earth and grab his foot. 

He always comes with Derek on the anniversary of the fire to visit the graves, just like Derek comes with him on the anniversary of Stiles’s mother’s death, and Derek visits his family on every birthday or major anniversary. He sits next to the gravestone of Derek’s mother, Talia Hale, and traces her name on the tombstone. Before he leaves this world, Stiles will have to move Derek’s remains here. It’s where he would want to be. 

In his world, Peter is buried right next to Talia. Even though Derek couldn’t forgive his uncle, he said that Peter deserved to be with his family. And Talia was his favorite person in the world, according to Derek. She was the only Alpha he was ever willing to follow, and when she died he became undone. He’d spent years trying to determine who had set the fire that killed her and the rest of the family, finally pinpointing a group of hunters led by Kate Argent, one of Derek’s former girlfriends. Laura Hale had refused Peter when he insisted the Hale pack search down the guilty parties and kill them. Derek believed that was the reason Peter was so desperate to be the Alpha, desperate enough to kill his own niece. He didn’t just want power. He wanted revenge. 

And now Peter, or at least the shattered remains of him, is looking for revenge again. This time against Stiles, the person who killed _him_. 

“What do you think you’re doing?” 

Stiles raises his head to see Derek, still in his robes, standing over Stiles with a thunderous expression. Stiles blinks and looks past him to see the burial procession slowly making their way back to their cars. Derek must have been leading the service. “I’m sorry,” Stiles says, struggling to his feet. He can’t meet the eye of this _thing_ wearing his husband’s face. “I didn’t know you’d be here.” 

Derek places a protective hand on Talia Hale’s tombstone. “You have some nerve,” he says coldly. 

“I know. I’m going, okay?” Stiles can hear a very faint, high-pitched humming now that Derek’s standing next to him. He had missed it at the church, not knowing what to be listening for, but it’s the same sound he had heard on the barrier spell. The person standing in front of him is under an enchantment. 

That settles it. This is a doppelgänger. 

“Oh, God,” Stiles says miserably. Derek is still scowling, waiting for him to leave, but all of a sudden the stress and loneliness and fear bubbles over. “I’m so sorry,” Stiles tells the priest, a catch in his voice. Sure, it wasn’t really _Stiles_ who had created the doppelgänger, but he knows that he would have, if it had happened in his world. “I’m so, so sorry for doing this to you.” 

It’s not a lie, and his heartbeat stays steady, but Derek only bares his teeth and says, “I don’t care.” 

“I’m going to fix it,” Stiles promises. He doesn’t know how yet, but he’ll either find a way to expel the remains of Peter’s soul or simply put the doppelgänger to rest. It feels almost as important as his actual mandated-by-magic task now. 

The fury drops away from Derek’s features, and he simply looks devastated. Stiles knows this expression. It’s the way Derek looked after he’d killed Peter, and the way he’d looked after Stiles had been attacked by a kelpie and nearly killed. It’s a look at that says there is no remedy for a despair this great, and it breaks Stiles immediately. “You can’t,” he says simply. 

Stiles turns and runs so Derek won’t see him cry. 

# 

Maybe he doesn’t have to actually have sex with the doppelgänger. He could always find some way to have Derek’s sperm taken, then get himself impregnated by IVF. Sure, it won’t be a werewolf baby, but it fulfills the terms... 

Stiles groans aloud as he makes his way up the steps to his apartment, brain practically overheating. Scott’s mom is a nurse and might be able to help, but Stiles knows enough about IVF to know that he’ll probably need to be pumped full of fertility drugs, and it certainly takes longer than a week. Besides, he has no idea how a mage’s biology works. He doesn’t think he actually has eggs or a fertile cycle, just a magic, ready-when-he-needs-it womb. Magic and science don’t mix. 

No, he’s going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. 

Maybe he could glamour himself to look like someone else, and cast a spell to make Derek forget his vow of chastity? Some sort of seduction spell was surely in his grimoire. The thought actually perks him up for half a second, before he realizes that what’s he’s imagining is essentially rape. 

Still, if it’s to save his husband… 

No. _No._ Stiles is going to do this the right way, by fixing Other-Stiles’s mistakes. He’s going to leave this world better than he found it, not worse. There has to be some way to reverse the doppelgänger’s fury. Surely it’s the remains of Peter’s consciousness twisting Derek’s mind; his constant fury over his highjacked body making Derek think he hates Stiles. If Stiles can find a way to put Peter to rest, he’ll be all set. 

Stiles dutifully gets past all of the locks on his door and stumbles inside. He’s exhausted again, thanks to all the enchantments drawing on his energy, but he forces himself to sit down at the table and flip through the grimoire. 

_Death spells._

 _Drowning spells._

 _

Domovois. 

Doppelgängers.

_

There it is. 

He smooths down the page, noticing grimly that it’s been dog-eared. There’s a crude illustration of a person with a jagged line running down the middle of their body right above the wall of text. _An embodiment of darkness and malice, the doppelgänger is a very powerful magical creation. It may best be described as an amalgam of two souls: the Resurrected and the Sacrificed._ ” 

Stiles turns the page and shudders at the next image: an incredibly realistic face appearing to transform into another, mouth open in a silent scream. 

_Only mages of strong training and true natural talent can attempt, and the creation usually drains even the most experienced of all their powers. Just as creating a doppelgänger leaves an indelible mark on the soul, so too does it leave a mark on the skin. Any mage who succeeds in such a creation will forevermore be marked with a scar over his dominant palm’s life line, to signal his defiance over the Natural Order._

Stiles flips his hands over and his heart sinks. Sure enough, there’s an almost imperceptible scar on his right hand. 

_Doppelgängers are unnatural and as such as not subject to all laws of humanity. As unholy creations, doppelgängers may not step onto sanctified ground. They are difficult to enchant and often become fixated on one person, usually the person the Resurrected loved best in his lifetime. This person is in the greatest danger, as the doppelgänger will dedicate its existence to his destruction. The reasons for this are unclear, but it is suggested that it is governed by the Sacrificed soul attempting to reassert its dominance in the body it used to control._

Oh, awesome. 

_The magic used to create a doppelgänger is complicated and has been refined. It once was that doppelgängers were frequently created by those mad with grief, usually by forcing a mage to perform the spell against his will. The Old way has therefore been purposefully lost to the sands of time and we will not speak of it. To create a doppelgänger in the current age, the mage must direct his magic through an item of emotional significance belonging to a person loved by the Sacrificed, the Resurrected, and the mage himself. This ensures that mages will not be forced by strangers to create doppelgängers against their will, as the mage must be tied by love to both the person he Resurrects and the person he Sacrifices. The item, once charged with magic, must be placed on the body of the Sacrificed while the following is chanted…_

There are a few words in Latin scrawled and Stiles skips to the next section, skimming it to see if there’s anything he can use. _Doppelgängers usually live a natural lifetime… a doppelgänger will always be connected to the mage who created it, and, as it shares the mage’s magic, may even be able to take over the mage’s body and control the mage as its puppet… any mage who attempts to create more than one doppelgänger in his lifetime will surely die… doppelgängers are imbued with the magic of the spell that creates them, and often become stronger mages than their creators…_

Stiles frowns. Doppelgängers become mages? Holy shit. Derek could have absolutely _leveled_ him back at the cemetery. How hadn’t he realized that Derek was a mage before now? Besides that slight magical hum, there was nothing about him that signaled it. 

Weird. 

There’s nothing on the page about how to fix a doppelgänger, just some warnings about how difficult they are to kill, due to their superior magic and often superior strength. That line is underlined, which makes Stiles shiver— has Other-Stiles been trying to find a way to destroy his creation for years? That’s seriously grim. 

Come to think of it, if this is a real parallel universe, where _is_ Other-Stiles right now? It’s another nosebleed-inducing thought and Stiles shakes it off. He’s already started to compartmentalize his brain into Priority Thoughts and Throwaway Thoughts— there are some things he just can’t let himself get caught up in worrying about, like the physics of alternate realities or the heartbreak of Other-Stiles’s lost baby. 

Stiles keeps flipping through the grimoire, trying to find some spell that might help him, but he comes up empty. The best thing he finds is a section on spells to _soothe a fraught soul_. It’s basically just a way of calming down a demon enough to be able to exorcize it, but Stiles figures it’s worth a try. He’s going to have to just go to the church and try to talk to Derek. Sure, Derek had threatened to kill him if he ever went back to the church, but a man of God wouldn’t dare kill someone on hallowed ground, doppelgänger or no. 

Wait a minute. 

Wait one fucking minute. 

Stiles flips back through the grimoire to the page on doppelgängers and runs his finger down the page. 

_As unholy creations, doppelgängers may not step onto sanctified ground._

But Derek had been at the church, _and_ the graveyard. Both holy places. 

Derek isn’t the doppelgänger after all. 

Derek is _Derek_. 

Stiles is so relieved he practically collapses onto the kitchen floor. There’s no magic here at all. Derek isn't dead; he just hates Stiles for some unknown reason, and Stiles has to figure out why. He scrubs at his eyes and then stops, remembering the tiny white scar across his palms— the scar that proves Other-Stiles _had_ created a doppelgänger at some point. 

It had to be three years ago, when he’d frantically approached Deaton, covered in blood. Right before Derek had turned against him. 

And— since nothing is ever a coincidence— probably right around the same time his pregnancy had ended. 

Who is buried out in the woods? Why was Derek's wedding ring buried with them? What had happened to Stiles's baby, and what had happened between him and Derek? 

And if Derek isn’t the doppelgänger… 

Just who had Stiles brought back three years ago, and who had he sacrificed?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know it seems like we're just back to square one with this last reveal, but I promise this chapter dropped a whole bunch of hints about what really happened between Stiles and Derek three years ago. One more chapter before the reveal! (I think? This story has taken about 500 plot turns from its original conception so I'm basically just giving up on planning). Hope you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

“I want to take down my constant enchantments.” 

Deaton gazes at Stiles from across the desk in his vet clinic. “I see,” he says neutrally. 

Stiles nods, confident in his decision. He spent the entire night tossing and turning, and he woke up so exhausted he could barely drag himself to Deaton’s office. The enchantments are absolutely draining him, and he needs them gone if he wants to get anything done. “From what I can tell, I’ve got at least three.” Stiles ticks off on his fingers. “The barrier spell. Whatever the hell _this_ is.” He tosses the egg-shaped item he’d found in the box onto Deaton’s desk. “And one on Derek Hale.” 

“And the one you placed on yourself,” Deaton adds, absent-mindedly picking up the egg and rubbing his thumb over it. 

“Right— wait, what?” 

“You placed a spell on yourself three years ago,” Deaton says matter-of-factly. 

Stiles, stupidly, looks down at himself as if he expects to see his skin glowing. “I did? What is it?” 

“Like many other things, you wouldn’t tell me.” 

Stiles shudders. “Well, then I want that one down too.” 

“Hmm.” Deaton leans back in his chair, looking Stiles up and down as if he’s a fascinating science project. “Leaving aside the simple fact that you might have had a very good reason for those enchantments in the first place…I’m honestly not sure if it’s possible. Your magic is very weak, and has been for a long time. Ending an enchantment takes magic in and of itself.” 

“So can I just end one at a time?” 

“You could,” Deaton says, a bit reluctantly. “But since you created them all around the same time, I worry they’re interconnected— all part and parcel of one long magical transaction. Every enchantment crashing down at once would return an incredible amount of energy to your body. You’d be out-of-control, unable to think rationally.” 

“A magic overdose?” Stiles smirks. 

“It’s no laughing matter. Mages on overload strike out with all their force against anything they perceive as a threat. I once heard of a mage who drew on too much power and killed her husband simply because he grabbed her arm. Her magic tore him to pieces before she even knew what she was doing.” Deaton shakes his head, expression grave. “I won’t risk it.” 

“So they’re just going to stay up forever?” 

“Constant enchantments end with the mage’s death— ” 

“Oh, that makes me feel much better,” Stiles snaps. 

“ _Or_ if you expel too much magic.” Deaton sees the confused look on Stiles’s face and tries to explain. “If you try a spell that takes more magical energy than you’ve got, your powers work like a circuit breaker. Overuse, power outage, reset. The constant enchantments don’t come back if that happens. Now, that _might_ prevent the problem of magic overload as the enchantments shut off, but it could also seriously injure you or make you lose your powers entirely.” 

“I want to try that.” 

“You won’t be doing it with my help.” 

“Deaton— ” 

Deaton puts up a hand to shut him up. “Until you know why you originally enacted them, and remember if they’re interconnected, I won’t help you.” 

Stiles resists the urge to kick the leg of Deaton’s desk like a high-schooler. “Deaton, please just help me out here. I’m trying to unravel this whole thing, and I-I’m fucking _scared_.” His voice shakes and he crosses his arms tightly. “I think I might have killed someone,” he admits in a rush. He hasn’t told Deaton about the scar on his hand yet, too scared of how he might react. 

Deaton’s face softens slightly. “Stiles, I’m quite sure you didn’t.” 

Stiles sighs. He’s learned his lesson an assuming anything, but, well, who else could those bones in the woods belong to? “I think I might have killed Peter Hale.” 

As usual, Deaton doesn’t react at all the way Stiles expected. “If that’s true, then it wasn’t your fault.” 

Stiles gives Deaton his best you-gotta-be-fucking-with-me look. 

“Peter Hale was a very troubled man.” Deaton sighs, still gently rubbing the egg. “He recognized his sister as his Alpha from a very early age, and he worshipped her. When the Hale house burned down, he was absolutely broken. He begged me to find some magic to turn back time and give him a chance to save her. Thank God you were too young a mage to have any real power yet, or I’m sure he would have come to you. I tried to warn Derek and Laura about him for years, and I was frankly relieved when he left town.” 

“Or died,” Stiles says in a small voice. 

Deaton nods. “If that’s what happened, you can’t blame yourself. I’m sure it was the result of good intentions— maybe you were protecting the pack. Maybe you were protecting yourself. You wouldn’t kill anyone intentionally or recklessly, Stiles.” 

But Stiles can’t scoot around _maybe_ anymore. He slumps down in the chair and wonders if he can figure out a way to undo the enchantments without Deaton’s help. “Thanks anyway,” he says, holding out his hand for the egg. 

Deaton hands it over. “By the way,” he says, “this isn’t one of your constant enchantments. It’s a Memento.” 

Stiles takes it carefully. “A what?” 

“You used to call them ‘memory flash drives.’ I can’t believe you don’t remember— you would create these all the time, rather than, say, leave a note telling us where you were going. It drove Derek absolutely insane, though you would often be very sweet about it…give him a Memento of the first time you said, ‘I love you,’ for example.” Deaton waggles his fingers for Stiles to give the thing back, and Stiles does so. “You just make a copy of a memory, give it physical form, and the receiver cracks it over his head…” Deaton demonstrates, carefully to keep the egg from actually touching him and breaking. “And they experience the memory through your eyes.” 

Stiles takes it back. “Can I use myself?” 

“You can if you’d like, but once you use it, it’s gone. I don’t know why you would create a memory for yourself, so it must be specifically for someone else, and you don’t have enough power to create another.” 

Stiles frowns, torn. This was in the box for Derek, and for all Stiles knows it’s completely useless to him. What if it’s going to be vital in making Derek love him again? He stuffs the Memento into his pocket, deciding that he’ll wait another day or two and see how much progress he’s made before he does anything drastic. “Okay,” he says, scooting back his chair. “Thanks for your help.” 

“Best of luck,” Deaton says. Stiles can feel his gaze all the way out of the clinic. 

# 

Stiles texts his friend Danny as he leaves the clinic, asking him to meet at Stiles’s apartment to break the password on the flash-drive. Danny texts back, sounding vaguely surprised, telling Stiles he can be there in twenty minutes. 

Back home Stiles pulls out the grimoire again and flips to the section on Mementos, just to read up on them. When Danny knocks at the door Stiles hurries to let him in. “Hey, man,” he says. “Thanks for coming.” 

Danny steps through, grimacing a little at the sight of the cauldron and barrier spell. Danny was one of the last of Stiles’s friends to learn about magic in Beacon Hills, and he’s never been fully comfortable with it. “Gotta say, I was just surprised to hear you’re still alive.” 

“Sorry?” 

“You haven’t contacted me in, like, three years, dude. Besides Scott and his family, no one’s seen you in forever. Don’t get me wrong, hermit life looks _awesome_ and all, but I worry you’ll end up one of those people they find has been dead in his apartment for ten years.” 

“Wow,” Stiles says, a little stunned. “Sorry, man. I’ve been busy.” 

“I can see that.” Danny sighs and cracks his fingers. “Now, where’s this flash-drive you apparently can’t just break into with magic?” 

Stiles takes Danny into the bedroom and opens up his laptop. He hovers over Danny’s shoulder, trying to watch him work, but Danny keeps snapping at him so he goes back into the kitchen. He flips the pages of the grimoires and stops when he reaches _Mage pregnancy_. 

_The ability of both genders to conceive and carry children is Nature’s greatest gift to the Mage._

Stiles traces the illustration of a pregnant man with his finger and feels the old, constant longing well up inside of him. 

_A biologically male Mage may become pregnant through penetrative intercourse, but only when he wills such a pregnancy to occur. Because his womb is created and sustained through magic, the foetal child will similarly be imbued with magic. A Mage who conceives with another magical being will create a deeply powerful child._

 _Mages are extraordinarily protective over their young. This serves as Nature’s protection to the babe, as mages may be tempted to draw on the magic of the foetus to increase their own power. Such an attempt would destroy the foetal child._

Stiles shudders. Is _that_ what had happened to Other-Stiles’s pregnancy? He still doesn’t know if he’s a hero or a villain in this world, but if Derek hates him, he’s cut off all of his friends, and the mark of dark magic is scarred on his skin, it certainly doesn’t seem out of the realm of the possible. 

He flips the page and stares at the last illustration: a man he swears looks like him, cradling a baby. _The bond of love between Mage and child is the strongest force in Nature. A Mage whose child is lost may turn to darkness…_

A hand comes down on his shoulder and Stiles jumps a foot. “Hey,” Danny says. “I got in. You’re good to go.” 

Finally, one thing goes right. “Thanks so much man.” Stiles digs a twenty-dollar bill out of his wallet. “Does this cover it?” 

Danny starts to take the money, then hesitates and gives Stiles a slightly reluctant but genuine smile. “No payment needed between friends. Happy to help.” 

“You sure?” 

“Yeah.” Danny shrugs into his jacket. “Just…don’t be a stranger, all right? Now I know that you still have my number. We’ll watch a game together or something.” 

“Sure thing, man.” 

Danny snorts as he flips the deadbolt. “And maybe cool it with all the locks. Hey, once I figured out the password I wrote it down on the notepad by your laptop, in case you get logged out and need to open it again.” 

“Thanks, Danny.” 

“See you around.” 

Stiles shuts the grimoire and hurries over to the laptop. Danny’s left the folder open and Stiles scans the flash drive’s contents: 

**_From Cora’s computer._**

 ** _Peter’s files._**

 ** _

DEREK READ THIS FIRST.

_**

Stiles frowns and hovers his cursor over the first folder. The files from Peter’s computer he’s seen before— when he was investigating Peter for Laura’s death he’d gotten Danny to help him hack into Peter’s laptop, where he’d found a shitload of incriminating information. But why the hell would he have files from Cora’s computer? She took her laptop with her when she left, along with everything else. He clicks it open: 

**_Kate Argent records_**

 ** _Peter Alibi 1/17_**

 ** _

Laura Hale Autopsy Report 

Laura’s Computer— Peter/Laura emails 

Derek’s Computer— Peter/Derek emails

_**

There’s also a file named “Derek Goodbye Letter” and when Stiles opens it he sees the note Cora had left for Derek when she ran out of town. But now Stiles doesn’t believe that she just left because she didn’t want to be a part of Derek’s pack. These files tell a very clear story about what _really_ made her leave. 

January 17th was the day Laura Hale had died. The autopsy report proved that Laura could only have been killed by a werewolf. The emails showed Peter’s mounting frustration with Laura’s refusal to hunt down Kate Argent and her fellow killers. Cora had been investigating Peter too, just like Stiles. 

Stiles clicks on a document simply named “Cora Hale Statement.” 

_Derek, Stiles, or whoever gets this letter:_

 _Peter Hale killed my sister and he’s going to pay._

 _

Consider this my full confession: if you find Peter Hale dead, I was the one who killed him. I’m going to kill him, and then I’m going to leave town. If you find this letter, you know that it’s either done or I’m doing it now. Don’t try to stop me. I’m going to make him pay no matter what I have to do. I’ll end this NO MATTER WHO gets in my way. 

If Mom was still alive, she would have done the same thing. 

If Mom was alive, we wouldn’t be in this mess to start with. 

When it’s done, I’ll leave forever. You’ll never have to see me again. 

The Hale family is too fucked up to stay together anymore. 

And if I go missing, and Peter’s still around…well, something tells me he won’t exactly cry about killing one more niece. Don’t let him get away with it. 

And I love you. Even if I don’t know how to show it. I wish I’d never come back here, but Derek, I do love you. You’re my brother and my alpha and I’m going to miss you. 

Cora Hale, 3/22. 

_

Stiles stares at the screen, dumbfounded. Had Cora killed Peter? When she ran, she’d left another note for the pack, one that didn’t mention Peter at all. Why did Stiles have this letter? 

He highlights with his cursor one line: _I’ll end this NO MATTER WHO gets in my way._

He thinks with sickening dread of the bones out in the woods. 

Had someone gotten in her way? 

Filled with a sudden, driving horror, he clicks back to the main folder and opens the file named DEREK READ THIS FIRST. 

_Derek,_

 _If you’re reading this, then the enchantment’s been lifted, you knew where to find the flash drive and its password, and— I can only assume— I’m dead._

 _

I know you must be so incredibly confused right now, and I’m sorry for that, but there’s no time to waste. In the box where you found this flash drive, you’ll also find a Memento. Use the Memento NOW. It will explain everything. If I’m dead, then my barrier spell is down, and IT is coming for you. Get the pack to where you’re all safe and find some way to kill it. I know it’s going to be hard for you to do that, but remember that it’s not the person you remember. It's evil. 

It’s a monster, and it’s here because of me, and I’m so sorry. 

You won’t be safe until it’s dead. Find some way to kill it. Do what I couldn’t. I’m going to devote every waking minute to finding a way to destroy it, but if you’re reading this then I failed. 

Also in the box you’ll find coordinates to the burial site. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where it was before. You’ll understand everything once you use the Memento. 

HURRY. Mourn me later. Fix my mistakes first. 

I’m so, so sorry for what I did to you. I only ever wanted to protect you. Maybe in another life we’ll get it right. 

All my love always, 

Stiles.

_

Stiles’s finger jabs over the “x” at the top of the screen before he even realizes what he’s doing. He’s shaking, tasting bile at the back of his throat. 

He must have been so _desperate_ when he wrote that. Why? What had he done to Derek that was so terrible? What was he so afraid of? 

He turns his head and sees the barrier spell, still humming along in the living room. The barrier spell. He’d almost forgotten about that stupid thing. What is it keeping out of Beacon Hills? 

There has to be a way to find out. He approaches it, so frustrated he has to clench his hands into fists so he doesn’t just smash it. Staring into its rainbow center, he focuses all his energy on it. 

_Come on. Show me what’s out there. COME ON!_

The clear bubble fills with a foggy haze, with a fuzzy black image in the middle, and excitement runs through him. He’s getting closer. 

_A little more. Almost there. Come on…_

It wavers and comes a little more into focus. He tenses every muscle inside him, feeling like he’s pouring all his energy into the spell. 

_Come on, please…_

It starts to fade, and fury rips through him. He can’t lose it now; he _has_ to see what’s out there. He reaches down even deeper into the core of his being, suddenly lightheaded, staring into the bubble until his eyes tear. 

_SHOW ME!_

There’s an incredible feeling of release and, as the image clarifies, the face in the fog almost leaps out at him. Stiles stumbles backwards in shock, and the lightheaded feeling takes over. He can still see the face staring at him as everything goes black. 

# 

When Stiles wakes up moments later, he feels weird. _Really_ weird. For the first time since he got to this world, he doesn’t feel exhausted. In fact, he can feel magic flowing through his veins, sweet and strong and powerful. 

All at once he knows what must have happened. Just like Deaton had said, he’d used too much energy. He’d had a magical power outage, and his constant enchantments had all been switched off at once, returning the power to him. 

Sure enough, when he looks up at the barrier spell there's just an empty circle. The apartment is silent, the humming completely stopped. He feels like he's barely had time to process it when pain greater than he's ever known explodes in his head. It's like claws digging into his brain and he opens his mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. He struggles in silent horror as something--some _intruder_ reaches into his brain, trying to take him over. 

Filled with sheer terror, he sees his right hand raise, completely out of his control. He remembers what he had read in the grimoire about the ability of a doppelgänger to control the mage that created it. 

The enchantment he'd had placed on himself. It had been preventing _this_ , and now his protection is gone. 

Stiles gathers up his newly returned power and directs it against the intruder. There's a long, silent struggle for control, and suddenly, just as quickly as it had come, the pain is gone. Stiles kneels in the middle of the kitchen, panting. 

He's gotten rid of it, but it's going to come back. 

And, without the barrier spell, it can get into Beacon Hills. 

Stiles remembers the face he’d seen staring at him— a face he’d never expected to see. No, it can’t be. He must have been wrong. He must have just imagined it-- 

He turns and stumbles back into the bedroom. Next to the laptop is the Avengers notebook, open to a clean page, where Danny had written the password for the flash drive. 

Five letters. 

A name. 

Stiles sinks down, staring at the notebook. 

The name of the person he’d just seen staring out at him, with more malevolence in their gaze than he could ever have thought possible. 

He hadn’t imagined it. 

He knows who the doppelgänger is. 

But _how_? And _why?_ His gaze flickers back to the letter for Derek, open on his computer: _Use the Memento NOW. It will explain everything._

If what he wrote in this letter is true, then there isn’t much time. Derek— and, it seems, the entire pack— is in danger. 

Stiles reaches out and grabs the Memento. He takes a deep breath, raises it, and cracks it over his head. 

For a minute there’s an almost pleasant sensation, like fingers running down his scalp, and then he feels as though the entire world is fading away. It’s like being aware while falling asleep, or sinking in very deep water without ever reaching bottom. 

He barely has time to be afraid before it’s over, and he’s inside the memory. 

The memory of what happened three years ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big reveal comes Tuesday, get your predictions locked in before then! I'm so glad you're all enjoying this little nut of a story, because I'm having an absolute blast writing it :D


	6. Chapter 6

**April, Three Years Ago**

Stiles Stilinski really, really doesn’t want to wake up. 

He’s snuggled in bed with his fiancé, pressed against the werewolf-warm body he adores so much. Derek is sound asleep, one hand draped over Stiles’s flat abdomen, and Stiles blinks sleepily down at it. 

Even when Derek’s asleep, he’s protecting their cub. 

Stiles smiles and puts his hand over Derek’s. He’s suspected that he might be pregnant for two weeks now, and yesterday he took a pregnancy test that confirmed it. Just to make sure he’s going to the doctor’s today, and then he’ll tell Derek. He’s sure Derek knows already; he’s been scenting at Stiles all week and rubbing circles into Stiles’s belly whenever they’re watching television or curled in bed together. He’s just waiting for Stiles to make it official. 

Stiles chuckles under his breath. He never thought he’d have a whoopsie-baby, since mages can only get pregnant when they will it to be so. He thinks back a little sheepishly to last month, when Derek had been pounding into him, whispering in his ear how much he loved Stiles; how he couldn’t wait to be Stiles’s husband and start a family with him, and Stiles had let himself start to fantasize about having Derek’s children. That one minute of longing had been enough to kick his magical womb into gear, and, well, here they are. 

And, God, Stiles is excited. He already loves this baby so much, and he rubs his hand over Derek’s, imagining that his little magic bean feels all safe and warm and loved inside of him. 

Derek hums sleepily, slowly waking up. Stiles presses his face into the crook of Derek’s next. “Five more minutes?” he suggests in a whisper. 

Derek mumbles in the affirmative and wraps his arms even tighter around Stiles. 

Stiles smiles as he drifts back off into sleep. 

His life couldn’t be any more perfect. 

# 

Five minutes turns into twenty, and Stiles finally has to insist they get out of bed and go wolf down breakfast before he’s late to his appointment. He’s a little nauseous as they start downstairs and Derek supports him, a tiny knowing smile on his face. 

They’ve just reached the bottom of the stairs together when they see that the light is on in the living room. Derek snarls and automatically puts himself protectively in front of Stiles, lowering into a crouch. Stiles gathers up his energy to launch an offensive against the intruder. 

Then Derek relaxes and straightens up. “Uncle Peter?” 

Derek’s uncle smirks at them, standing by their bookshelf. “Sorry, sorry,” he drawls. “I just wanted to pop in and join you for breakfast, but it seems that you’re running a bit late this morning, so I have to be on my way.” 

Stiles stares at the bookshelf. Peter had shoved something back into place just as they came downstairs, and he wants to know what it is. “Were you reading my grimoire?” 

Peter puts on his most innocent expression. “Just amusing myself while I waited for you.” 

Stiles doesn’t believe him for a second, but whatever Peter was looking at in the grimoire flees his mind when he sees that his laptop is on the coffee table. It would be really, really bad if Peter was in there. Stiles has been investigating Peter for the murder of Laura Hale for months now, and all his evidence is on that laptop. If Peter knows that Stiles is on to him there’s going to be trouble. 

He’s let his investigation stall over the past two weeks while his pregnancy dominated his every thought, but he vows now to get it back on track and figure out a way to deal with Peter once and for all. 

“See you at the pack meeting,” Peter calls as he heads towards the door. 

“No pack meeting this week,” Derek says. “Kira and Scott are on their babymoon, remember?” 

“Of course.” Peter stops at the door and looks at them with a small, unsettling smile. “Two members down in an already decimated pack. We’d better hope nothing attacks before they get back.” 

“You’re uncle’s getting weirder,” Stiles mutters once Peter’s shut the door behind him. 

Derek grunts and moves into the kitchen. “I think he misses Cora.” 

Stiles doubts that, but Peter does have a point about their pack being weak. He rubs his hand over his belly thoughtfully; with Scott and Kira’s baby and now his, the pack will have two much-needed new members very soon. 

“Bacon okay for breakfast?” Derek asks. 

Stiles checks the clock. “Actually, I have to run. I have a doctor’s appointment.” 

Derek cocks an eyebrow. “That so?” 

“Yep.” 

Derek puts his hands on Stiles’s hips, thumbs brushing just under his navel. His eyes are sparkling. “Well, you’ll have to let me know if the doctor tells you anything _interesting_.” 

Stiles smiles. “You know, I think she just might.” 

Derek chuckles and gives Stiles a kiss. “You smell so good right now,” he whispers as he pulls away. “You’ve smelled really good for a _while_.” 

Stiles holds the embrace for a few moments longer, so content he could have just stayed in Derek’s arms all day. They’re going to have a baby. A _baby_. 

They’re going to be so happy. 

“Hey,” Derek says as Stiles bustles around grabbing his keys. “Have you seen my ring? I swore I took it off and left it on the table last night.” 

“Hm, I haven’t. It’s probably upstairs somewhere.” Stiles blows Derek a kiss. “Don’t miss me too much.” 

“Sorry, babe,” Derek says, inhaling as if he wants to catch one last whiff of Stiles’s new scent. “I always do.” 

# 

“Congratulations, Mr. Stilinski.” The doctor looks up from her clipboard, smiling ruefully. “You’re officially the strangest patient I’ve ever had.” 

Stiles laughs. The medical professionals of Beacon Hills are well aware that they work in a town with everyday odd occurrences, and it’s gotten to the point where they don’t even blink at the weirdness. “Does that mean I’m pregnant?” 

“You’re pregnant.” The doctor sighs. “And I’m going to be doing a _lot_ of research over the next few months.” 

“Well, I’m going to be doing a lot of throwing up, so…even?” 

The doctor snorts and scribbles down a few things on her clipboard. “I assume you know way more than me about this, since most men would be just a little bit more freaked out than you, so…anything I should know right now?” 

Stiles shrugs, tracing a heart over his belly with his index finger. “As far as I know, the baby just grows in the womb for nine months, and then we either cut it out or I…will myself to grow the necessary birthing equipment.” They wince in tandem at the thought. “I think I’ll probably chose the C-section.” 

“Solid choice.” The doctor rips off a prescription from her pad. “I’m going to treat this like a female pregnancy for now, all right? Here’s a prescription for prenatal vitamins, and I’d like to have you back here, let’s say, every two weeks going forward?” 

Stiles takes the prescription. He doesn’t mind having to come in over and over; whatever ensures the baby is healthy. “Thank you so much.” 

“You’re very welcome.” The doctor shakes his hand. “Bring your partner to the next appointment and we’ll do an ultrasound, so you can see your little guy.” 

The thought makes Stiles so excited he almost flies out of her office. 

# 

He’s still riding on air when he reaches the parking lot. He unlocks his car, climbs in, and turns the key, thinking only about how he wants to share the news with Derek. 

The engine coughs, sputters, and dies. 

Oh, come on. 

Stiles tries the key again and nothing happens. 

He sighs and gets out of the car so he can see what’s wrong with the engine. 

Stiles?” 

He glances up and sees Derek’s uncle climbing out of his own car, parked right next to Stiles’s. “Car trouble?” Peter asks pleasantly. 

Stiles frowns. Without even realizing he’s doing it he turns his keys in his hand, brandishing the sharp tip like a knife. “What are you doing here?” 

“Oh, just running some errands.” Peter keeps smiling, but every nerve in Stiles’s body is screaming that he’s in danger. “And why are you here? Have my instincts over the past two weeks been correct? Is the Hale family finally getting a new member?” 

“None of your business,” Stiles says. He gathers up his energy for a protection spell, waiting for Peter to make a move. “How did you know I would be here?” 

Peter ignores the question. “Looks like your car’s dead. Would you like a ride home?” 

“No.” 

Peter’s eyes flash blue. “Get in the car, Stiles,” he says, all false pleasantness gone. 

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” 

“Wrong answer,” Peter says, and moves before Stiles can react. Stiles’s first instinct is to protect his vulnerable stomach and he lets his spell drop as he tries to turn. Peter correctly anticipates this move and he’s easily able to grab Stiles’s neck, fingers expertly going for the pressure points. 

Stiles gasps and thrusts his elbow back, hoping to catch Peter in the ribs, but he’s no match for a powerful werewolf. Peter opens the car door and manages to wrestle Stiles inside the front seat. Just before Stiles loses consciousness he sees something that makes his blood run cold. 

Cora Hale is supposed to be long gone from Beacon Hills. 

So why is she unconscious in the back seat of Peter’s car? 

# 

When Stiles wakes up, they’re on the interstate, exits flying past at terrifying speed. 

“Peter,” he slurs. “What are you doing?” 

Peter doesn’t look away from the wheel. “I’m not stupid,” he says. “I just kidnapped an Alpha’s pregnant mate. My nephew is going absolutely crazy right now trying to find you, so I’m making sure he can’t.” 

Stiles groans in pain as he tries to move. “But _why_?” 

Peter finally looks at him and his eyes are downright terrifying. “Don’t play dumb,” he says coldly. “You know I killed Laura. I’ve known for weeks; I saw your laptop. You and Harriet the Spy back there have both been investigating me. ” He jerks his head to the backseat and Stiles looks to see Cora, still unconscious. 

“She didn’t leave town,” Stiles whispers, head spinning with the revelation that Cora had also suspected her uncle. 

“Of course she didn’t. She came to confront me— to _kill_ me. She thought she was stronger than I was.” Peter snorts in derision. “I wrote that note. I was going to just kill her and bury her out in the woods, and, once enough time had passed that nobody would be suspicious, kill you too. But then I realized…a pregnant mage, and the blood of my blood. No reason to let all of that go to waste.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Peter’s lips curl up. “It’s a surprise.” 

Stiles shudders. “Derek’s going to find us.” 

“No, he won’t. That boy is no true alpha, and he doesn’t have a true pack. The Beacon Hills pack is weak, and it _disgusts_ me. That’s why I’m going to fix it.” 

Stiles tries to draw on enough magic to do _something_ but he feels so shaky and weak that nothing happens. A tear of fear and frustration slips down his cheek. 

“Don’t cry.” Peter reaches into his breast pocket. “Here, I have a present for you.” 

He tosses Derek’s wedding ring, still on its chain, into Stiles’s lap. Stiles grabs it up, willing to admit that it brings him comfort. “Why do you have this?” 

“You’ll see.” Peter puts his hand on Stiles’s neck. “Why don’t you go back to sleep,” he suggests, almost sweetly. “You’re going to need your energy for what’s coming.” 

His fingers tighten and Stiles clutches Derek’s ring until he swears it burns his hand. 

# 

He’s tied to a table in some place built of concrete, probably underground. Chains are holding him down, wrapping around his legs and abdomen and wrists, and he’s never been so afraid in his life. 

He tries to direct his magic to the chains around his hands but every spell just slips away, drummed down by his terrified heartbeat. 

Peter walks in and stands over him. “Good,” he says. “You’re awake.” 

“Peter,” Stiles gasps. 

“Don’t try anything stupid.” Peter is holding a knife, and Stiles watches it with terror. “You’re strong, but not strong enough to kill me without draining your powers. If you do that, you’ll never get out of these chains, and nobody knows that you’re down here.” He flips the knife so its point is dangling above Stiles’s stomach. “You and your baby will starve to death.” 

Stiles whimpers. He can’t move, can’t turn, can’t do anything to protect his belly from that knife. 

Peter pulls out the chain with Derek’s ring and dangles it before Stiles’s eyes. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, all right? You just need to do one thing for me, one little thing, and then I’ll take you back to Derek.” 

“What do you want?” 

Peter lays the ring on Stiles’s stomach. “You’re going to direct your magic into this. Charge it up with power, _all_ of your power. I know you can handle it, now that you’ve got a second source of magic in there.” 

Stiles shudders. The idea of _giving_ his powers to Peter is absolutely repulsive. “What are you going to do with it?” He looks around, startled to see that they’re the only two people in the room. “Where’s Cora?” 

“Don’t worry about Cora.” 

“Tell me, or I won’t help you.” 

It’s the wrong thing to say, and Stiles cries out with fear as Peter presses the tip of the knife into his stomach. “You’ll help me, or I’ll cut that baby out of you. It won’t look like much yet, but I’m sure you’ll feel its loss.” 

Stiles sobs, squirming against the chains. “Peter, please, _please_. I’m your family. This baby is your family. _Please_.” 

“My family burned to death, and I’m the only one who gave a damn.” Peter digs in the knife. “It’s just one little spell, Stiles,” he says, voice suddenly cajoling. “I’m not going to do anything _bad_ with it.” 

Stiles wheezes out an incredulous laugh, and Peter’s gaze goes murderous again. 

“Do it, or I’ll kill you, and then I’ll go back to Beacon Hills and kill Derek.” 

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. He can feel the knife slipping through another level of skin, down into the muscle. An inch or two more, and it’ll reach his womb. 

“How much do you love your baby, Stiles? How much do you love your mate?” 

The knife twists in a little deeper, and Stiles wails, “Okay, I’ll do it!” 

The knife is withdrawn immediately. Normally Stiles would have healed himself, but Peter is waiting for him to charge the ring, and if he wants to do this safely he can’t expel any more magic than necessary. “Put the ring in my hand,” he orders, and Peter does, eyes shining with triumph. 

Stiles shuts his eyes and focuses his energy on the small, warm object in his hand. He’s charged objects before, but never with this much power, and as he pours more and more energy into the ring he swears it starts to get stronger, hungrily sucking his magic out of him. He’s losing control. 

“That’s it,” Peter croons. He’s stroking Stiles’s hair, hands almost loving as he holds Stiles down. Through the narrowed slits of Stiles’s eyelids he can see the ring glowing and trembling in his hand. “You’re almost done.” 

Stiles feels like a huge straw has been stuck into his core and, just when he thinks he can’t take any more, the last bit of his magic is sucked through and a great emptiness fills his chest. For a moment he feels so afraid, so hollow. The wonderful buzz of his magic in his veins is _gone_. Then he feels it, just a spark, deep down inside of him. 

The baby. The baby isn’t hurt. His womb is filled with magic, and it’s all still there. 

Stiles sags in his chains, too exhausted even to feel relieved. 

“There, now,” Peter murmurs, taking the ring reverently from Stiles’s hand. “Your part is finished. All I needed was your magic.” 

“Please take me home,” Stiles whispers. 

“Soon.” 

Peter walks out of the room, leaving the door open. Stiles can hear a confused, sleepy whimper coming from the room next door. 

“Cora?” he tries to call, but he’s too drained to even shut his eyes. 

# 

He can hear Peter chanting in Latin, which makes him shudder, and just when he thinks he might finally be able to sink into a thick, rewarding sleep, Peter storms back through the door. 

“It’s not working!” Peter pulls out the knife again, looking ready to pierce Stiles through. “What did you do?” 

Stiles stares at him. “You can’t cast spells,” he manages to say. “You’re not a mage.” 

“But I have your magic!” 

Stiles shakes his head. “Only someone blessed by Nature can command magic.” 

“Fine.” Peter holds a piece of paper up before him. “How close do you have to be to the object to make it work?” 

“I don’t know…close enough that my voice can reach it.” 

“Good. Read.” 

Stiles doesn’t recognize the spell, but he knows he refuses Peter won’t show him any mercy, and he’s too weak to defend himself in any way. He swallows and reads aloud, the letters dancing before his eyes in his exhaustion: 

“ _Redite in sanguine os ad te, ad vitam brevem. Anima in caligine, et detestare mors complexum. Audite vocem meam, et non tardabit audent. Nomine tuo vitam et vindicare._

Peter takes the paper back and scribbles two more words underneath the spell. “Now this.” 

He holds it back out and Stiles reads it: “Talia Hale.” 

There’s a sudden hot, sharp feeling on his palm, as if it’s been sliced with a sword, and he cries out, just as another cry rings out from the room next door. 

Sheer rapture fills Peter’s features. He drops the paper on the ground and runs. 

Now, finally, Stiles is able to pass out. 

# 

When he wakes he feels just a little bit better. That small amount of magic left in his body is growing stronger, though he knows it’ll be days before he’s back to his full capacity. 

He’s still in chains, and Peter is nowhere to be found, but Stiles can hear voices close by. He debates whether or not to call out. A part of him is afraid that Peter has no intention of returning him home, but he’s fulfilled his end of the bargain. Peter is completely insane, but he surely has _some_ honor left. 

Derek must be so worried right now. It’s been hours since Stiles left for his appointment, and Derek is waiting for him to come home and confirm his pregnancy. He probably has strawberries and sparkling juice in the fridge so they can celebrate; he was probably looking up baby onesies online all day before he got home and realized Stiles wasn’t there. 

Stiles’s scent will have stopped at the hospital parking lot when he was forced into Peter’s car. His own car is just sitting there, keys abandoned on the ground. 

“Peter!” Stiles shouts, clanging his chains. “I did what you wanted, okay? Let me go!” 

The voices fade, and moments later Peter appears in the doorway. “Stiles,” he almost breathes, tugging someone else into the room. “You’ve done such a wonderful, wonderful thing, you sweet boy. Look what you’ve done for us.” 

For a second, Stiles thinks it’s Cora Hale Peter is leading into the room, but this person is just a little bit taller and filled out. Her hair is long and dark, like Cora’s, but when she raises her head to look at Stiles his breath catches in his throat. 

He knows that face. He saw her a long, long time ago, back when he was very young, pushing a shopping cart filled with a shrieking brood of children through the grocery store. But he’s much more familiar with her through pictures, where she’s just a still presence, surrounded by other happy faces of long-dead people. 

Talia Hale. 

“What did you do?” Stiles whispers, unable to tear his eyes away from Derek’s dead mother. 

“What did _you_ do,” Peter corrects, one hand rubbing up Talia’s arm soothingly. 

“Is this my son’s mate?” Talia interrupts. Her voice is low and beautiful, but her eyes are curiously blank. Stiles wonders if she knows that her entire family except Peter, Derek and Cora is gone. If she remembers the years she spent dead. If she knows what Peter has done to bring her back. 

“He’s carrying your grandchild, Alpha,” Peter tells her. 

Talia smiles. 

“Peter,” Stiles pleas. “Listen to me. This isn’t really Talia. You can’t bring someone back from the dead.” Stiles looks around wildly. “God, where’s Cora?” 

“Don’t worry about Cora,” Peter says again. “This is your new Alpha, Stiles. Show respect.” 

“This boy isn’t pack,” Talia says quietly. 

“Hm? Of course he is. He’s a mage; quite useful when he has to be. He’s pregnant with another little Hale wolf.” Peter is looking at his sister like a puppy dog waiting to be praised for performing a trick. “A new pack member for you.” 

“Peter, come on. She isn’t _real_ ; she isn’t your Alpha. Derek’s the Beacon Hills Alpha.” 

“Talia will challenge him, and, if he’s smart, he’ll concede,” Peter says matter-of-factly. “Then the Beacon Hills pack will finally be strong, and we can hunt down the people who caused the Hale fire all those years ago…” 

“No.” Talia’s eyes flash Alpha-red, and Stiles shudders. Clearly Peter has already pledged his loyalty to her, making her the Alpha of a pack of one. “The Beacon Hills pack has to be destroyed. The hunters may be able to help us.” 

Peter’s hand slips away from her shoulder. 

“Peter,” Stiles whispers. “It _isn’t Talia._ ” 

Talia is smiling broadly. “We’re going to kill them all,” she says. She turns and grips Peter’s chin. “You’ll help me, won’t you Peter? I don’t need to destroy you as well, do I?” 

Peter gapes at her. “Derek is your son,” he manages. “You need the Beacon Hills pack…” 

“I need them dead.” Her voice is so matter-of-fact, but now her eyes are burning with conviction and hatred. “That’s why I’ve been brought back; that’s my purpose.” She reaches down and pulls something out of Peter’s pocket. “This belongs to Derek, doesn’t it? This is what you used to save me.” 

Derek rang dangles from her fingers. Talia closes her eyes and a moment later a foggy image of Derek rises from the ring. He’s searching somewhere frantically. “Stiles!” he calls, voice cracking from exhaustion. “Can you hear me?” 

“How did you do that?” Peter asks, awed, as the fog dissipates. 

“I have the mage’s magic,” Talia says simply. “You gave it to me. And there’s still so much dark magic in this ring…” she holds it up, watching the ring bob at the end of the chain. A self-satisfied smirk spreads across her face. “I’m unstoppable now,” she says softly. “Derek is my last weakness, and he’ll be dead by morning.” She turns to look at Peter. “You said the pack was weak. How many members?” 

Peter’s gaze slides to Stiles, then away. “Derek and the mage. Three betas, Scott and Boyd and Erica. Scott’s mate, a kitsune. A banshee. The kitsune is pregnant. The pack is very weak right now; Scott and the kitsune aren’t in town.” 

“Peter, don’t,” Stiles begs. He tries to move his chains, but his magic isn’t strong enough yet. It’s in _Talia_ now. 

“We’ll kill Derek, the banshee, and the two betas today, then wait for the other two to return and kill them as well. But Derek first. I can’t _focus_ on anything until he’s finished.” Talia grimaces slightly, pressing one hand to her head. “I’ve never…I want to hear him _beg_. I want to smell his blood on my hands.” 

“We could just run,” Peter tries. “Couldn’t we, Alpha? Kill the hunters, and then you can settle things with Derek.” 

“He needs to be dead.” Talia’s voice sharpens. “He needs to _suffer_.” She looks over at Stiles again, smile turning predatory. “You said this is his mate?” 

Stiles sucks in a breath as Talia walks over to him. Her claws elongate slowly and she drags one along his stomach. “I can smell his filthy seed in you,” she hisses. 

“Please,” Stiles gasps. “Please, please…” 

“I’m going to kill you first and throw your wasted body at my son’s feet. Or maybe…” Talia smiles and closes her eyes. Seconds later there’s a terrible pain in Stiles’s head and he screams, sure he’ll die from the sudden pressure. It feels as though fingers are rooting through his skull, picking apart his brain. His vision blurs and split and he can _feel_ Talia inside of him, looking through his eyes. 

When it ends Stiles gags and retches bile all over his chest. Talia’s hand is on his throat. “Maybe you’re useful to me, mage,” she croons. “Maybe I’ll make _you_ kill my son. He’ll see you coming towards him with a knife and he won’t even understand why he’s going to die. He’ll die hating you.” 

“Peter, help me!” Stiles swears he can smell his own terror in the air. The thing that’s touching him isn’t _human_ ; it’s unnatural and evil and it’s going to destroy everything he loves. 

He has to get home to Derek. He has to get out of here or Derek is going to die, and his baby is going to die, and Scott, and Kira, and Lydia…Stiles’s vision whites out as his own helplessness consumes him. He needs his magic back; he needs _power_. He finally manages to wrench his right hand free from his chains and he grabs Derek’s wedding ring, trying to see if there’s any magic left in it that can help him. 

Talia laughs at him. “Not for you, little mage. That’s dark magic and you’re too white, too pure to harness that. You’re useless to your pack now.” 

She’s right. The magic in the ring is foreign to him now, changed by the dark spell Peter had cast. But there has to be something. Half-insane with fear, Stiles digs deep inside his body. There has to be magic left; he can _feel_ it; there’s a spark; he just needs to set it free… 

It bursts out of him like a lightning bolt, more power than he’s ever known before. Talia Hale shrieks as the blast blows her backwards. His chains practically disintegrate, and yet the magic keeps flowing, a total and complete overload. 

_Too much power_ … 

He’s out of control, and he knows it, but he can’t stop. 

“Peter!” Talia shrieks. “Stop him!” 

He has to get out of here. He needs to be back in Beacon Hills, so he can warn Derek of what’s coming. 

He feels Peter grab his arm, trying to tug Derek’s ring out of his grasp, just before everything goes white. 

He can feel himself falling and he thinks he hears Peter cry out in fear, and after a dizzying few moments he hits the ground and he knows he’s back in Beacon Hills. When he cracks open his eyes he sees that he’s in the woods, probably about a mile from home. 

The out-of-control feeling fades and he draws in huge, gasping breaths, rational thought returning. 

Oh, God. 

Oh God, oh God, oh God. 

He’d needed power, and he’d sought it within himself blindly, and he knows where it had to have come from. His hand presses against his belly as if he can stuff the magic back in; undo his terrible mistake. 

The only part of him that had any magic left— that tiny, safe womb— 

He’d destroyed it so he could have its power. 

“Noooo,” he wails into the night. “I didn’t mean it…I didn’t mean it, _please_ …” 

But it’s too late. 

Stiles feels a yawning chasm of grief open up within him, beckoning him to fall off the edge. He wants to crawl home and collapse into Derek’s arms, but he knows he has to wait to fall apart, because the _thing_ wearing Talia Hale’s face is coming. And oh, God, Peter had grabbed his arm… 

Stiles looks up and sees Peter. 

Or, rather, sees what’s left of him. 

His eyes are wide with surprise and fear and one severed hand is still grasping Derek’s ring. His head is torn off from his body and leaks blood into the earth. He looks like he was killed in some kind of bomb blast. 

Stiles did this. 

Pain skitters through his head and he hears Talia, speaking through their inexplicable connection: _I’m coming, little mage. Go say your goodbyes to my son. You’re no match for me._

Stiles cries out and forces her away. He doesn’t want to think about where this magic in his veins is coming from, but he has to use it. He has to figure out what Talia Hale is, so he can stop her. 

He’s covered in Peter’s blood, and there’s a dull ache throughout his body, but he scrambles to his feet and runs. 

# 

Deaton answers the door wearing flowered pajamas and a scowl. “Stiles!” he gasps when he sees his visitor. It’s the first time Stiles has ever seen the emissary flustered. “What— Derek’s been looking everywhere for you. What _happened_?” 

“Can I bring someone back from the dead?” 

Deaton stares at him in complete bemusement. “What?” 

“Do I have the power to bring someone back from the dead, Deaton?” 

Deaton’s eyebrows lower. “No, you certainly do not. You have a tremendous amount of power, but that’s far beyond your abilities.” 

Stiles smacks the doorframe in frustration. How had Peter brought Talia back? He’d used Stiles, and the ring, and… 

What had happened to Cora Hale? 

_Blood of my blood…_

“But there’s a way,” Stiles guesses. “You can turn a living person into a dead person, can’t you? That’s within my power?” 

Deaton steps backwards. “Stiles, what did you do?” 

“ _Tell me!_ ” 

“Yes,” Deaton says, a pleading note in his voice. “It’s called a doppelgänger, and technically, it’s in the realm of the possible for you, but Stiles, you have to promise me you won’t do it. It’s dark magic, and it never comes out right— they’re evil, and extremely powerful creatures, and if you tried to create one I’d fear for the lives of everyone in Beacon Hills.” 

Stiles stumbles away from the door. 

“Stiles, promise me you won’t do it!’ 

_I already have_. 

“I have to go,” Stiles says numbly, and he’s gone before Deaton can utter another sound of warning. 

# 

Derek isn’t home. He’s still out looking for Stiles, but Stiles doesn’t have time to find him. Instead Stiles pulls out his grimoire and flips wildly to the page on barrier spells. 

He’ll do this first; create a spell powerful enough to keep Talia Hale out of Beacon Hills. Then he’ll find Derek and explain what’s happened. He’ll have to tell Derek about Peter and Laura, and what happened to Cora, and what Peter’s done…his hands shake as he prepares the barrier spell. Derek will be stunned and devastated. If Talia somehow gets through, Derek won’t be in any position to fight her. 

Without Scott and Kira, they’re down in numbers. Erica and Boyd are strong, but they’re no match for this. 

He doesn’t know what to do. 

He finishes the barrier spell. It takes more energy than he’s really comfortable with, but it’s specifically targeted to keep doppelgängers out of Beacon Hills. He closes his eyes, waiting for the post-spell exhaustion to pass, when he feels the pain in his head again. 

_No!_

He fights back against her, but he’s a little weaker now. _I’m going to hurt you, mage,_ he hears her rage. _You can’t keep me away forever. I’ll use you to do my work for me. You’ll wake up and find the bodies of everyone you love at your feet…_

He shoves her out and imagines slamming a door in her face. He stumbles back to his grimoire and finds a self-protection spell. It’s going to drain more energy, but he can’t let Talia take over his body. 

“ _Ego sanctuarium,_ ” he reads, voice shaking. “ _Nemo delictum in mentem mihi. Sed me, et non sum ianua clausa sit amet._ ” 

He feels it take effect in the way his energy level drops even lower. 

The more magic he tries to use to keep her out, the less he’ll have when she inevitably gets through. The barrier spell and the self-protection spell…they won’t last forever. As long as the doppelgänger is alive, Derek will never be safe, and even with the entire pack against it, they won’t be able to beat it unscathed. 

He flips through his grimoire until he finds the section on doppelgängers. 

_To create a doppelgänger in the current age, the mage must direct his magic through an item of emotional significance belonging to a person loved by the Sacrificed, the Resurrected, and the mage himself._

Derek’s ring. Stiles shudders. A person loved by all three… Stiles, Talia, and Cora, all tied together by love of Derek. 

_Doppelgängers are imbued with the magic of the spell that creates them, and often become stronger mages than their creators… a doppelgänger will always be connected to the mage who created it, and, as it shares the mage’s magic, may even be able to take over the mage’s body and control the mage as its puppet...As unholy creations, doppelgängers may not step onto sanctified ground. They are difficult to enchant and often become fixated on one person, usually the person the Resurrected loved best in his lifetime. This person is in the greatest danger, as the doppelgänger will dedicate its existence to his destruction._

He has to find a way to kill the doppelgänger, but while he’s looking for the solution, Derek will be in danger. Talia might be able to break through Stiles’s self-protection spell, or find a way through the barrier… 

She won’t stop until Derek is dead, and for as long as she exists, she’ll be tied to Stiles. 

Stiles sinks onto his couch and closes his eyes. He hears Peter’s words echoing in his head: _How much do you love your mate?_

# 

Stiles is waiting at the kitchen table when Derek comes through the door. Derek stops short when he sees his mate. “Stiles!” he gasps. “I’ve been so worried— what— ” he freezes, nostrils flaring, and Stiles knows what he’s smelling— or, rather, not smelling anymore. 

“Oh, Stiles,” Derek breathes. “Oh, no.” 

Stiles moves into Derek’s embrace, pressing his face into Derek’s chest. “The baby’s gone,” he whispers, and finally lets himself break down. 

Derek hushes him, rocking him back and forth. “I’m here,” Derek promises. “I’m so sorry, Stiles, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. You’re all right. I’ve got you.” 

“I love you,” Stiles says. 

Derek kisses the top of his head. “I love you too, Stiles. I love you, I love you so…” 

His eyes go wide and roll into the back of his head. Stiles catches him as he falls, withdrawing the tendrils of the spell he’d used to put him under. 

“I love you,” Stiles repeats, tears rolling messily down his face. “But you won’t remember that.” 

# 

He places Derek on the couch and sits with Derek’s head in his lap, running his fingers through Derek’s hair. He gathers up his magic and starts to speak, gently, as if he is reading a bedtime story to the child he will never have: 

“You came home and found me in the bedroom, packing up my things. You could smell right away that I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I was angry, and we fought. And I told you that I never loved you. I told you I only ever wanted to be mated with a werewolf so I could get pregnant, because our baby would be fused with magic from its conception. And I told you…” Stiles starts to cry again, but he speaks around the tears. “I told you that I sacrificed our baby for the power, just like I always planned on doing. But Peter got in my way. He tried to stop me, and so I killed him. I killed your uncle, and I wasn’t sorry. 

“You could smell his blood on me. You heard my steady heartbeat. You knew it was true. You believed every word I said.” That’s the most important part to add, because he knows that Derek won’t just believe it on his own; it has to be worked into the spell. “You thought back to the years we’ve spent together, and you knew deep down that I wasn’t lying when I said I never loved you. And for that reason, for all the lies you now knew I told, you realized that you never loved me either. You accused me of putting a love spell on you, keeping you bewitched and by my side just to increase my own power. I didn’t deny it.” 

Derek twitches under Stiles’s hand and moans in his sleep. 

“You begged me to tell you where I had buried Peter, and I refused, just to be spiteful. You told me to get out. You threw your ring at me and vowed never to see me again. You spent the night on the couch, wondering how you could have ever thought you loved a selfish, terrible, evil little shit like me. 

“And in the morning, you’ll wake up and know exactly what you have to do. In the years to come, you’ll tell everyone who asks that you had a calling. You’ll concede the role of Alpha to Scott, and you’ll go to St. Agnes, and you’ll ask to be trained as a priest. You’ll be so happy there. You’ll be peaceful; you’ll never want to step off of that sacred ground. And you’ll never, ever want to lay eyes on me again. 

“If this spell is ever broken, you’ll remember that you loved me. If it breaks only upon my death, you won’t understand what happened to us, but you’ll know that you need to go, as quickly as possible, to wherever I was living. There will be a box for you; I’ll hide it in my dresser. Inside you’ll find everything you need to understand what’s happened, and to finish what I started. There won’t be any time to delay. 

“And hopefully I’ll be able to break this spell myself. Maybe in a month; maybe in five years. If I do, just remember that I did love you. Always, and with all my heart.” 

The magic sinks into Derek and, just like that, it’s done. 

Stiles holds him for as long as he dares, and then he packs up everything he will need and walks away. 

# 

When Scott comes home the next day, it happens just the way Stiles had planned. Derek is at St. Agnes by the time night falls. Scott begs Stiles to tell him what happened, but Stiles refuses. He can’t let anyone know about the doppelgänger, because they’ll want to help, and that will get them killed. 

He rents a cheap apartment and devotes himself to the study and destruction of doppelgängers. 

He buries Peter Hale in the woods along with Derek’s ring, mostly so he won't be tempted to turn to the darkness always beckoning within him and use the ring himself. 

He goes to Peter’s house and finds Peter and Cora’s laptops. He pulls every incriminating file off and puts them on a flash-drive for Derek, so Derek will have all the evidence he needs to believe that Peter was really capable of such darkness. He passcodes it with Talia’s name, so nobody can open it without already knowing the secret of the doppelgänger. He puts it in a box for Derek; adds in the coordinates of Peter’s grave and the ring, so Derek can make sure the doppelgänger doesn’t get it. 

And then he sits, and replays every terrible memory, copying them, creating a Memento so Derek will be able to see it all one day. 

The last thought he puts in is a simple one: 

_Forgive me._


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One quick house-keeping note: I meant to add "miscarriage" to the tags for the last chapter, and it completely slipped my mind when I posted. I hope nobody was triggered or upset after reading that part of the last chapter, and I'm really sorry for not providing an adequate warning. I promise to be more careful with tags going forward. (To that end, there's some fairly canon-typical violence in this chapter, which I also added to the tags). Thank you!

When Stiles opens his eyes his cheeks are wet with tears he doesn’t remember. He’s still kneeling on the floor; only seconds have passed, though it feels like a lifetime. 

Stiles had thought that this alternative version of himself had been a villain, but he had been so wrong. 

It had all been to save Derek. 

He feels all of Other-Stiles’s grief as freshly as if it has just happened to him, but he knows he doesn’t have time to wallow in it. If the protection spell is down, Talia is already on her way. 

How long has it been since his magic short-circuited? Five minutes? Trying to keep from panicking, he fumbles for his cell phone and dials Deaton. 

“I did it,” he babbles as soon as Deaton picks up. “Three years ago I created a doppelgänger. It’s Talia Hale, and she’s coming _now_.” 

Deaton says a word Stiles never expected to hear from him. 

“How do I kill it, Deaton?” 

“Ah…” Stiles can hear Deaton flipping through pages. “It has a human body, so you can simply kill it if you stab it, shoot it, choke it…” 

“But it’s really fucking powerful, and can heal itself. Come on, Deaton, there has to be something specifically tailored to it.” 

“It would have to be something quick. Ripping out its heart wouldn’t give it a chance to heal…but you’re right, it’s powerful enough that you wouldn’t be able to get near it.” Deaton growls in frustration. “We need a way to deprive it of its power.” 

Stiles rubs at his head. “Okay, so…get it to expel too much energy? Trick it into performing some kind of spell…” Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. “What if we convinced it to try and raise Peter from the dead? That would be a lot of magic…” 

“Here!” Deaton shouts. “I’ve got something…no, no, this won’t work.” 

“What it is? Deaton?” 

“Its magic comes from the mage that created it, and the item the mage used. If both are destroyed, it loses its power.” Deaton pauses, and then speaks sternly, as if he thinks he knows what Stiles is thinking. “You’re not sacrificing yourself over this, Stiles.” 

“ _Fuck_.” Stiles dashes over to his grimoire and starts looking through it frantically, as if something is magically going to appear. “There has to be something else. If I destroyed the ring— the item I used to create it— will that at least weaken it?” 

“It’s possible.” 

Stiles says a silent prayer of thanks that he hadn’t left the ring in the woods. “Can you get over to my apartment, like, now?” He runs to his bedroom and digs through his jeans until he finds the ring, still in his pocket from yesterday. He can feel the dark magic still in it, just a little buzz, like an itch that can’t be scratched. 

“I’ll be there in— let’s say fifteen minutes; I need to pack up everything that might be of help.” 

“Okay, please hurry. I have to go make sure Derek— ” 

There’s a pounding on Stiles’s door and he freezes. “Deaton,” he hisses, “I think it’s here.” 

“Hide,” Deaton says sharply. “ _Now_.” 

The pounding continues. “Stiles!” A voice shouts through. “Are you there?” 

Stiles moans. _No_ , fuck, Derek had left St. Agnes’s; he wasn’t safe anymore. “It’s Derek,” he gasps, running to unbolt the door. 

“I’m on my way,” Deaton promises, and the line goes dead. 

Stiles tears open the door and Derek steps through. “ _Stiles_ ,” he says, a thousand emotions in that one word. “What is going on?” 

Stiles pulls him all the way through and slams the door. 

“I— it was like I just, I don’t know, _woke up_ from this really long dream.” Derek is staring at him with an expression somewhere between awe and abject horror. “Why did I think you killed Peter? And— our _baby?_ You were missing, and then I found you in the kitchen, and then I woke up the next morning and remembered something that I know now never happened…” 

“I don’t have time to explain.” Stiles grabs his grimoire and tucks it under his arm. “We have to get you back to St. Agnes.” 

Derek tries to catch his hand, but Stiles is flying all around his apartment, trying to grab anything he might need if they encounter Talia on the trip back to the church. “I’m not going back there. Why have I been there for three years? I’m not even religious!” 

“I’ll tell you later, okay? Just— ” Stiles grabs Derek’s arm to pull him towards the door. 

“Wait.” Derek plants his feet and cups Stiles’s cheek. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I swear to you, Stiles, I still love you. Whatever’s been going on over the past three years…that wasn’t really me. Stiles.” His thumb caresses over Stiles’s cheekbone. “Please believe that.” 

Stiles closes his eyes and lets himself lean into Derek’s touch for just a second. “I do,” he promises. “And I love you, always. But we have to get you back to St. Agnes’s, just for a little while.” He bites his lip. “Do you trust me?” 

Derek has no reason to, not after everything, but he nods without hesitation. 

“Then come with me. Soon everything will be okay again, I promise.” 

Stiles opens his apartment door, and Talia Hale is standing on the other side. 

Everything slows and narrows to a point. Talia stares at him, eyes shadowed, almost half-insane. She looks ragged around her edges, as if she’s spent every minute of the last three years outside the fringes of Beacon Hills looking for a way in. 

Behind him, Derek makes a small sound of disbelief. “Mom?” he whispers. 

Talia raises her head to look at Derek. There’s no triumph in her gaze, only a dull relief. “Get out of my way,” she orders Stiles. 

“Derek, don’t get near it.” Stiles blocks the doorway. His heartbeat thuds in his ears, rabbit-fast with fear. He has no idea how to kill this thing, but it is _not_ going to hurt Derek. Stiles had fucked up this world by letting the barrier spell drop. He’s going to fix his mistake and end this right now, for his own sake _and_ for Other-Stiles’s. 

“No, Stiles, don’t you recognize her? It’s my mother!” Derek steps up right behind Stiles, breath hot and excited on his cheek. “How is this possible? Mom?” 

“It’s not your mother.” Stiles gathers up all of his power, not sure what to do with it. There must be some way to put up a protection around Derek, but if Talia is just able to knock it down he’ll have wasted his energy for nothing. 

“Get out of my way so I don’t have to kill you,” Talia snaps. 

“You can’t kill me. You’re tied to me.” Stiles smiles through his terror. “I already destroyed the ring,” he lies. “If you hurt Derek, I’ll slit my own throat. You won’t have any power left.” 

“You’re lying.” 

“I’m not.” Stiles bares his teeth. “There is _nothing_ I wouldn’t do for him.” 

Talia twitches slightly, then shakes her head, eyes still murderously fixed on Stiles’s. “I know the ring is here. I can feel it. And I’d rather not stay tied to you for the rest of my life.” Her lips curl, showing her teeth in a snarl. “After everything you’ve done, you stupid little thorn in my side, I’d happily trade a bit of my power to watch you die.” 

“Mom,” Derek pleas. “Mom, look at me. This is my mate, you don’t want to hurt him.” He reaches over Stiles’s shoulder to touch his mother and Stiles shouts, trying to stop him. Talia lets out a little cry and jerks backwards, away from Derek’s touch. 

Stiles freezes. Talia should be doing everything in her power right now to kill Derek, but she’s just glaring at them both, furious frustration in her eyes. _Why?_

Derek’s cross dangles over Stiles’s shoulder as he stares at Talia in shock and confusion. 

If doppelgängers can’t step on sacred ground, surely they’re also repelled by any sacred symbol. 

“The cross,” Stiles says, a wild grin breaking across his face. “You can’t touch him as long as he’s wearing it, can you?” 

Talia glowers at him, pure hatred on her face. “No,” she spits, and then her own dark grin, mirroring Stiles’s, transforms her, making her look even more terrifying that she already is. “ _I_ can’t.” 

Pain explodes behind his eyes, and he cries out. “Stiles!” Derek shouts. Stiles can feel Derek trying to hold him, trying to take away the pain he doesn’t even understand. Stiles tries to shove him away. Talia is fighting him from inside his own mind and he can feel her steely desperation. She’s not going to leave until Derek is dead, and she’s going to use Stiles to do it. 

As Stiles’s vision blurs he can see Talia’s body, still standing in the doorway, eyes shut tight as she concentrates on breaking into Stiles’s mind. 

She’s using power. A _lot_ of power. 

Stiles starts to form a plan. 

He concentrates with everything in him and shoves Talia out, picturing a steel trap shutting around his mind. It’s not as strong as a self-protection spell; it won’t keep her out forever, but it will do for now. He hears her roar with frustration but he doesn’t wait to see what she’s going to do next. Instead he expels some of his precious power to blast her backwards, out of the doorway, and slam the door in her face, quickly locking it behind her. He grabs Derek’s hand and pulls him into the bedroom, slamming and locking that door as well. It’ll take Talia a few minutes to break past Stiles’s internal defenses and try to possess him again, and he needs her out of earshot so he can make a plan with Derek. 

“Stiles, what’s happening?” Derek looks sick with horror. 

He purposefully uses the word _it_ , knowing that Derek can only see his mother, miraculously returned from the grave. “It’s not you mother. It’s something really bad, and its only purpose is to kill you.” Stiles pats his pocket to make sure the ring is still there. He may need it. “Derek, you’re going to have to do something really, really brave.” 

Derek gapes at him. 

“Do you trust me?” 

Derek nods and swallows. “Yes, I trust you. Tell me what I have to do.” 

_God, please let this work._

Stiles drops his voice. “When the door opens, run past it into the kitchen. It’s going to try and possess me. When it does, when you see it go really still and shut its eyes…you have to kill it.” 

Derek blanches. 

“I know. But you _have_ to, Derek, or it’ll kill us both.” Stiles hears his apartment door burst off its hinges and he grabs Derek’s hand. “Rip out its heart, if you can,” he orders. “Or get one of the knives and stab it. But you have to be as quick as possible, or it will try to heal.” 

Derek nods. His features settle into a grim mask of determination, one Stiles has seen a hundred times before, during a hundred other battles back in his own world. “All right.” 

“I love you,” Stiles says, and they turn to face down the door together. 

The door flies open and Stiles springs forward, Derek at his side. Talia growls and Stiles feels her grab him just as Derek streaks past her, into the kitchen. Stiles struggles in her arms but Talia holds fast. She goes still and he can feel her prodding, trying to get inside his mind, but his protection holds for now. “You stupid little fuck,” she growls in his ear. “Let me in, and maybe I’ll let you live.” 

“Fuck you,” Stiles pants. 

“Stiles!” Derek appears around the corner, a butcher knife clenched in his hand. He snarls at the doppelgänger, lowering himself into a crouch as if he might shift into his beta form. “Let him go.” 

Talia tsks and wraps her arm securely around Stiles’s torso. “Mother taught you how to say please, Derek,” she taunts. 

“You’re not my mother.” Derek makes eye contact with Stiles for a brief second, tilts his head to the right, and then darts forward. Stiles twists instinctively to the left. He hears a nauseating squelch as the knife slides into Talia’s stomach. 

Talia whimpers in pain but doesn’t let go of Stiles. Instead she slowly, painfully pulls the knife out with her free hand, and Stiles watches as the wound immediately heals. “Thank you, Derek,” she says while Derek stumbles backwards in horror. “This is just what I needed.” 

The arm around Stiles tightens, and Talia presses the knife up to his throat. Stiles can’t help but cry out as the blade presses into his skin, smearing Talia’s blood onto him. “Take off the cross, or he dies,” she says to Derek. 

“Derek, don’t,” Stiles croaks. 

“I’ll kill him, Derek. And I’ll enjoy it, so much.” She presses the tip of the knife to Stiles’s jugular. “You were always such a little hero as a boy. Whenever one of the younger children would break something you would always say it was you and take the punishment. You just couldn’t stand to see someone you loved hurt. Are you still a hero, son? Or will you let this pretty boy die for you?” 

“Derek, don’t do it, if you love me, please, don’t, _don’t_.” 

“When your mate dies, you feel it. I felt your father die as we burned in that house. It feels like…like a twig, snapping in half in your soul. You’ll feel all of his fear. Look how afraid he is to die, Derek. Your father was afraid, too.” Talia’s hand trembles and the knife presses further into Stiles’s throat, choking him. 

“Okay,” Derek says, raising both hands in the air. “I’m doing it, see?” 

Talia sighs, her breath ghosting across Stiles’s ear. “Finally,” she murmurs. 

“Talia, wait,” Stiles manages to choke out. “I have something you want.” He slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out the ring. The knife lets up, just a little, and he wheezes in relief. “Don’t you want this? This _created_ you. I’ll trade you…the power for Derek…” 

In the moment when her attention wavers Stiles lifts his arm and elbows her in the face. There’s a satisfying crunch and she grunts, blood from her broken nose spurting on Stiles. Stiles tugs the knife from her grip and stumbles forward, letting the protection around his mind drop. With relief, he sees that Derek is still wearing his cross. 

“Nice try,” Stiles taunts, hoping she’ll think he let his mental guard down accidentally. “You still can’t touch him— ” 

Talia shuts her eyes and Stiles feels that hot, blinding pain in his head. It’s stronger than ever before and he drops to his knees, unable to feel his lower body. 

“Derek, now,” he tries to shout, but he’s already lost control. He’s trapped inside his own mind, cloaked in darkness, lost and terrified. 

_Now I’ll make you kill him_ , the doppelgänger hisses. _Should I let you watch while you do it?_

His vision returns, first fuzzy and grey, and then everything comes back into focus. He can see but he still can’t control his own body. With every bit of strength in him he tries to drop the knife still clenched in his hand, but nothing happens. 

_Don’t,_ he begs uselessly. 

Its contentment spreads through him. _I’ve been waiting so long for this—_

He hears a sickening crunch and pop, and his body swings towards the sound. Derek stands before him, teeth bared, holding the doppelgänger’s heart in his hand. 

The doppelgänger’s body, a blank expression on its face, collapses. 

Stiles can still feel it in his mind, stunned senseless. He knows that brain activity lasts for ten seconds after the heart stops; the doppelgänger is dead but not yet gone. The ring in his pocket heats up, as if it’s sucking the magic back in. _You lose,_ he thinks triumphantly. 

“Stiles!” Derek grabs him by the arms. “Are you all right?” 

From the deep recesses of his mind he hears the doppelgänger’s voice, fading but still strong. _No. We both lose._

With its last bit of power, the doppelgänger raises Stiles’s arm. 

“Stiles?” Derek says, stepping closer. 

Stiles watches his own hand slit Derek’s throat. 

Derek falls, hands coming up to grip his throat, and blood sprays warm and sticky over Stiles’s face. 

Stiles doesn’t even realize that he has control of his body back until he hears himself screaming.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles has seen Derek hurt before. He’s seen Derek dying; once or twice he even thought he’d seen Derek dead. Derek is the most resilient creature in the world. He takes a punch and he gets back up, over and over, with a grim smile on his face. But that never makes Stiles any less terrified when Derek is injured, because someday the punch won’t just knock him down. It’ll knock him out. 

Today can’t be that day. Not when they’ve killed the doppelgänger, and Stiles is so close to completing his task. 

He leans over Derek, hands clamping over the wound in Derek’s throat. Derek is choking on his own blood. He’s trying to heal himself— if he was still an Alpha he would be able to, but he’s not anymore. He’s a Beta, which means his powers to self-heal are weaker, and Stiles can see that the wound is barely closing. The knife caught something major and even if Derek’s healing abilities close the wound, at this reduced rate of speed Derek is going to bleed out anyway. 

“Baby, stay with me.” Stiles’s hand slip off of Derek’s neck, there’s so much blood. “I’ll fix it, shh, shh, you’re going to be okay.” 

There’s a horrified sound from above him and he looks up to see Deaton standing in the doorway, arms full of books as he takes in the scene. The door is blown off its hinges. Talia Hale’s body is face down in the hallway, her heart carelessly tossed on the ground. The walls are splashed red with blood. 

Deaton’s books crash to the floor. 

“Deaton, help me,” Stiles snaps. They don’t have any time to waste “His throat’s been cut and he’s lost too much blood. I need a healing spell.” 

Deaton drops to his knees. “Not a spell,” he says. His eyes are sick with horror, but he’s trying to stay calm. “It’s too late for that. This is a mortal wound, and he’s already lost enough blood that just closing the wound won’t heal him. You need to transfer your magic into his body; that’ll automatically replenish his lost blood and keep his heart pumping.” 

“Okay. Okay.” Stiles can see Derek staring up at him, eyes starting to go a little glassy as he keeps choking. “So just…channel it into him. I can do that.” He sucks in a deep breath, knowing that he won’t be able to focus his energy if he doesn’t get calm, and presses down on Derek’s wound. 

“Stiles, wait.” Deaton touches him, almost hesitantly. “You should know…he’s going to need a _lot._ He’ll likely need all of the magic you have.” Deaton’s eyes are huge and sorrowful. “You won’t be a mage anymore.” 

Stiles freezes. If this was his world, his body, his powers, his Derek, he would have given the magic up without a second thought. But if he isn’t a mage anymore, he won’t be able to get pregnant. 

He’ll lose _his_ Derek, trying to save this one. 

But, as he feels Derek starting to go cold under his hands, he knows that he doesn’t have a choice. Either way he’ll fail his task. For one option, he is the only person who has to sacrifice everything. Other-Stiles will get to keep his Derek. 

Stiles closes his eyes and imagines his magic like a stream of water. He funnels it down into his hands and into Derek. 

Derek jerks under his hand and Stiles hushes him, eyes still squeezed shut. He can feel Derek starting to warm up; hears his breathing begin to even. His magic feels endless, and yet he knows that eventually he’ll reach the bottom of the well. 

“That’s it,” Deaton says. “You’re doing it, Stiles.” 

Stiles keeps going. As he continues to channel the power into Derek it begins to slow and thin. Just a trickle left. Just a few more drops… 

“You’ve done it.” Deaton grabs his hands, forcibly lifting them away from Derek. “Stiles, look. You healed him.” 

Stiles looks. Derek is white as a sheet and splattered with blood, but the wound in his neck has healed. He’s breathing steadily and when Stiles puts his hand on Derek’s chest he can feel that his heartbeat is strong. 

Derek shakily lifts a hand and grips Stiles’s. “I’m all right,” he rasps. 

Stiles smiles in relief and raises their entwined hands to his lips. “Thank God,” he whispers. “Hi. I love you.” 

“I love you,” Derek mouths back. 

“Stiles, is it…is it all gone?” Deaton is staring at Stiles as if he’s trying to see if anything is different. 

Stiles closes his eyes again and seeks inside himself. At first he can’t feel anything, not a single spark, and despair clouds his mind. Then, from deep inside of his chest, he feels it, like a little blip, a heartbeat slowly coming back. 

“It’s still here,” he says. He wants to laugh out loud and dance in relief. “Still a mage. Oh, thank you thank you, thank you.” He tries to jump to his feet and the post-magic exhaustion roars through him like a power-saw. 

“You probably shouldn’t have done that,” he hears Deaton remark calmly as he sways and practically nosedives towards the ground. 

Derek’s arms catch him just before he hits the floor. 

# 

There is so, so much that has to be done, but Stiles really doesn’t have to be the one to do it. For starters, someone has a lot of explaining to do to Stiles’s landlord, but Deacon whisks both Derek and Stiles away to give them a full checkup before anyone can come charging up the steps to see what’s going on. Stiles has a feeling Other-Stiles won’t be getting his security deposit back. 

Derek still doesn’t understand exactly what had happened, so Stiles has to tell him everything that he learned from the Memento. He tries to keep it as short and emotionless as possible, because it still doesn’t feel like he really lived it. When Derek holds him, trying to comfort him after Stiles tells him what had happened to the baby, Stiles silently apologizes to Other-Stiles, wherever he is. He is the one who has earned this comfort, this moment with Derek. 

As they rest together in Deaton’s clinic, hooked up to monitors, Derek asks quietly, “So Peter killed both of my sisters?” 

“Yes.” Stiles watches him to see how he will react. Derek doesn’t like to show his pain, but Stiles knows how much he’s hurting right now. It must be like losing Laura and Peter all over again. And Derek has always assumed that Cora was just off somewhere living a fabulous lone wolf life. Stiles can’t imagine how he would feel if he learned someone he loved had been dead for three years while he had no idea. 

Derek voices his thoughts: “Thinking about it feels like…like I’m falling in a hole that doesn’t have a bottom.” 

“It’s okay to be sad, baby.” Stiles almost wants to smile. How many times has he said that to Derek? Too many to count. His sweet, emotionally constipated sourwolf. 

“I know.” Derek stares into the distance for a while, lost in his own thoughts, and then he smiles. “Do you remember right after Cora came back to town, when she was just getting to know you and didn’t know if she could trust you yet? So you took her out on the town, just the two of you, for a bonding night?” 

Stiles grins. “Oh, my God. Yeah, I remember.” They’d ended up getting hideously lost and had to call Derek from some sketchy bar to come pick them up. He’d arrived just as they’d climbed on the table together to sing “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.” 

“And so you cast a spell to get both of you home, and Cora was so drunk that after you told her your full name was Genim Przemysław Stilinksi she kept squealing ‘GPS! He’s my own personal GPS!’ thinking she was so clever.” Derek laughs out loud. 

Stiles’s grin fades. “Yeah, that was great,” he says, trying to force his smile to stay. Of course he doesn’t remember that part. He hadn’t lived it. 

Deaton knocks on the doorway before strolling in. “It looks like you’ll both be absolutely fine,” he tells them. “I’d like to keep you here for another few hours, though, if that’s all right.” 

“It’s not like we have anywhere else to go,” Stiles says, frowning at the new thought. They can’t exactly go back to the apartment right now, and he has a pretty good feeling that Derek’s priest quarters won’t suffice as their new home. 

Derek looks a little embarrassed. “Actually…we still have the house. I’ve been paying the mortgage on it this whole time.” 

Stiles’s mouth falls open. “Seriously?” 

Derek nods. “I never knew why I was doing it. I just always knew it was the right thing to do.” 

Stiles wants to bury himself in Derek’s arms, but he keeps himself under control. “So we can go home?” he asks Derek hopefully. 

“We can go home.” Derek grins at him, and it’s so hard for Stiles to remember that it’s not really _his_ home, after all. “I think we have a lot of catching up to do,” Derek adds, voice low and eyes smoldering just a little. 

Stiles shivers. He knows that Derek can hear his heartrate speed up by the way Derek grins, just a little bit cocky. “I thought you took a vow of chastity, Father Hale.” 

“I did. What was I thinking?” Derek pulls Stiles close, so his words dance across the sensitive hairs on the back of Stiles’s neck. “Want to help me renounce it?” 

“Boys, I’m still in the room,” Deaton says, eyes desperately looking skyward. 

“So you are.” Derek bares all his teeth in a parody of a smile. “Leave.” 

“I’m leaving. There is just one more thing.” Deaton pulls out Derek’s wedding ring. “This needs to be destroyed. You’ve killed the doppelgänger, but it won’t truly be gone until you’ve released the dark magic that created it. Not now; your magic isn’t strong enough yet. Once you’ve had a few more hours to recuperate, it’s time to end this for good.” 

Stiles nods and takes the ring from Deaton. “I’ll buy you another one, babydoll,” he says to Derek. 

Derek snorts, and Stiles can hardly believe how much he’s missed the sound in the past three days. 

# 

There’s also the matter of reintegrating the Beacon Hills Pack. Scott and Kira come to Deaton’s clinic with Max; they’re in charge of disposing of the doppelgänger’s body and, since Maxie is still a little young for that side of pack life, they figured there was no time like the present to introduce Max to his Uncle Derek. Scott also willingly concedes the role of Alpha back to Derek. 

“I liked being a Beta,” Scott tells them cheerfully. “I’m too low-key to be an Alpha.” 

Kira nods in agreement. “He can’t even get Maxie to pick up his toys half the time.” 

Stiles grins and glances over at Derek. Max took to Derek right away, declaring that he smelled “like if Uncle Stiles was a wolf,” and is currently curled up in Derek’s lap playing with the cross necklace still around his neck. Deaton had washed it clean of blood and Stiles had begged Derek to keep it on; he knows the doppelgänger is dead but until the ring is destroyed it just feels safer to have him wearing it. “It won’t be weird for the little guy, having a new Alpha?” 

Scott shakes his head. “Baby werewolves are pretty chill,” he says. “They’re like, as long as a pack member is cuddling me, I’m happy.” He wraps his arms around his wife and smacks a kiss on her cheek. “But then, I’m the same way, so what do I know?” 

“You’re such a dork.” Stiles hops off of his steel-table-turned-hospital-bed and wraps Scott and Kira in a hug. “I love you guys,” he mumbles. “All four of you McCall-Yukimuras.” 

Kira pats his shoulder. “And we’re really glad to have the Hale-Stilinski team all-the-way-back,” she tells him. 

But of course Stiles knows that he _isn’t_ all the way back yet. Sure, these people look and act and sound just like his friends, but this isn’t his world. 

He has four days left to complete his task and go home, and then he’ll never see these versions of his friends again. 

“What do you want us to do with the B-O-D-Y?” Scott asks once Stiles is back on his table. 

Stiles looks to Derek. “Hale plot?” he asks. 

Derek nods. “Go to St. Agnes and ask for Father Charles. He’ll help you. I’d like it…her… _Cora_ buried right next to Laura.” 

“And…Peter?” 

Derek grimaces, then shakes his head. “Where he is, for now. I don’t want to bury him in the Hale plot until I’ve forgiven him, and that will probably take a long time.” 

Scott and Kira leave, and Stiles leans in to Derek so he can play with Max’s toes. “This little piggy went to market…” 

Max kicks at him sleepily. “Stooop,” he whines. “‘m not a piggy, I’m a wolfie.” 

“ _And_ a little fox,” Derek says. “Silly Uncle Stiles.” 

“Momma said a baby fox is a kit,” Max tells Derek. 

“That’s right, and a baby wolf is a cub.” 

“And I’m both.” Max nuzzles into Derek. “Gramma said a fox is a cunning trickster and that’s the best thing to be, but Daddy can growl at stuff and that’s good too.” 

“Did your daddy teach you how to growl?” 

Max gives Derek his best growl. 

“Wow, that’s pretty good.” 

“Momma said mine is scarier than Daddy’s.” Max is looking up at Derek as if he’s found his newest hero, and Stiles can tell he’s already subconsciously accepted Derek as Alpha. 

“That’s because Daddy is a big softie.” Stiles tickles Max’s toes one more time. “Now you take your nap, Mr. Cunning Wolf-man.” 

“He’s amazing,” Derek says softly once Max has drifted off to sleep in his arms. 

Stiles smiles. Derek is completely gaga for Max back in his world, and it’s nice to see that that’s true here, too. “Yeah, he’s great.” 

“Ours would be just a little younger now.” Derek swallows, not taking his eyes off the sleeping boy. 

“I know.” Stiles can’t look up. It’s not his loss; not his grief. 

“Someday…when we’re both ready…” Derek takes a deep breath and reaches for Stiles’s hand. “We need to get to know each other again first and take some time— a _lot_ of time— to get back to normal. But I promise you, in a few years, we’ll have everything we always wanted. Marriage, cubs…” 

“I’d like that.” Stiles rests his head on Derek’s shoulder. He wonders if Other-Stiles is watching them right now; what he would want Stiles to say. “Are you mad?” he asks softly. “I took almost four years away from you. It’s okay if you are; I would understand. I want to be able to talk about it.” 

Derek considers his answer for a moment while Maxie snuffles quietly in his sleep. “I’m not mad at _you_. I wish it hadn’t happened, absolutely. We should have had those years with each other. But it was Peter who took that from us, not you.” He tilts up Stiles’s face. “You did what you did to save my life. Was it necessary? I don’t care. You thought it was, and I trust that.” 

“You can still be angry.” 

Derek shrugs. “How could I be angry at my fiancé for putting me first? That’s why you did it. You weren’t thinking of yourself and— speaking as a former priest—that sort of unselfishness is a sign of how strong your love is.”” 

“I’ll always put you first,” Stiles says softly, feeling a dull blow in his chest as he realizes that it’s true. 

Derek’s eyes flash Alpha red, as if he’s making sure the power is still there. “But in the future, we discuss things. Even if you think you know what’s best. We’re a family, Stiles.” Stiles can feel him trembling, just a little, as he clutches Max in his arms. “You’re my only family. And I’ll always love you, always, but if I thought you were making decisions without me, I’d feel like you didn’t trust me. And then I couldn’t trust you. And I don’t ever want to feel that way.” 

“You can trust me,” Stiles promises. He reaches out and moves Derek’s arm, so Max’s head droops against Stiles’s chest. They sit there together, both of them holding the little boy, and for a few moments Stiles lets himself pretend that Max is their son. 

Then he lets the feeling go. 

He knows what he has to do now. 

# 

Deaton gives them the all-clear to go home later that evening, and even graciously gives them a ride. He reminds Stiles again to destroy the ring, shakes both of their hands, and drives off, leaving them standing in front of the silent house. 

Derek hadn’t been paying the electric bill, so they have to light candles in the kitchen, but everything else is just the way it was. The furniture, covered in a fine layer of dust; the plates in their cabinets; even the bed upstairs, sheets still neatly stretched on. 

They sit together at the kitchen table and Stiles places the ring right in front of him. Derek watches silently as Stiles closes his eyes and places just the tips of his fingers on the ring, the way Deaton had instructed. He whispers a single word: “ _Mundaret._ ” 

He feels the ring burn white-hot against his fingers, and then there’s a feeling of incredible relief and he _knows_ that it’s finally over and the doppelgänger is truly gone. He open his eyes and sees the ring, now blackened as if it has survived a fire, with a crack running all the way around its circumference. 

Stiles picks it up and shows Derek. “I hope we kept the receipt,” he says drolly. 

Derek takes it from him and considers it. “Actually I kind of like it this way. Let’s keep it.” 

Stiles stares at him, wondering if he’s joking. “Are you serious?” 

“Yes.” Derek considers it. “What happened to us was a nightmare, but we survived it. Now it’s a part of us.” He holds the ring up to the candlelight, and Stiles almost can’t tell that it’s cracked. “See? It’s still whole,” Derek says simply. 

Stiles reaches out his hands and Derek grabs them tightly. “I love you,” Stiles says. 

“I love you, too.” Derek pulls Stiles in and they hold each other for a long few minutes. “I want to be with you,” Derek says. “Tonight. I know it’s soon, but I miss you and I want to wake up in bed with you tomorrow.” 

“Yes.” Stiles presses his head into Derek’s chest. He’s done everything he has to do short of actually completing the task. There’s nothing standing in his way. All he has to do it go upstairs with Derek, take off his clothes, and will his body to take what Derek gives it and create a child. 

He’s at the finish line. 

He pulls away and gives Derek one more kiss. “Go upstairs and wait for me,” he says. “There’s just one thing I have to do quickly.” 

Derek cocks an eyebrow at him. “’Quickly’ isn’t going to turn into three years again, is it?” 

Stiles smiles and shakes his head. “Trust me,” he says, and Derek does. He squeezes Stiles hand, smiles at him, and walks upstairs. 

Stiles takes a breath and walks outside. It’s a beautiful, clear night, with only one star in the sky. A wishing star. 

But Stiles is done with wishes. 

“I know you’re there,” he says aloud. “I know you can hear me. I want to talk to you.” He blinks, and in that millisecond she appears in front of him, arms tightly folded. 

“What?” the Gemini snaps. 

Stiles swallows. He knows this is the right thing, but it still feels like he’s tearing away something in his chest. “I’m about to complete my task,” he says. 

“Yay,” the witch says flatly. “And you just had to take a pause to gloat about it?” 

“No. I want to make a new deal.” 

The witch can’t hide her shock. “You what?” 

“You said every task a human completes is a black mark against you, right?” She nods, looking dazed, and Stiles continues. “Well, then, I won’t complete my task. But there’s no punishment for it, because I didn’t fail, I just bowed out. It ends right here. Neither of us win, and neither of us lose.” 

“I don’t understand,” the witch says. “ _Why_?” 

Stiles fiddles with his hands, trying to put his feelings into words. “That’s not my husband,” he says finally. “The things that happen to us in our lives…those experiences are what make us who we are. I haven’t lived a life with the man in there. This whole experience has taught me that everything could change, if just one little thing was different. I did this because I wanted to have a baby with my husband. A baby that came from the two of us; that was created because we love each other.” 

The witch just keeps staring at him. “You’ll never get another chance,” she warns. 

“I know.” 

“Stiles.” It’s the first time she’s used his name. “This was your heart’s desire. You’re willing to give it up for— what? Some tortured display of moralism?” 

Stiles shakes his head. “No. For my husband. It’s not fair to him for me to just make this choice for us. I know if I came home pregnant and told him what happened he would still love me, and he would love the baby, but— could he ever trust me again?” Stiles sighs. “Besides,” he adds, “I need to be with him right now. Because he needs to know what happened to his sister.” 

The witch frowns, confused. “What?” 

“In our world, if Peter didn’t have a mage to create a doppelgänger, he would have just killed Cora when she came to confront him.” Stiles swallows again. He thinks of Cora Hale, a girl he wishes he’d gotten a chance to know better; a girl his husband will always love as his sister, no matter how estranged they might have been. “The Cora I knew is dead, isn’t she?” 

He knows the witch doesn’t have to answer, but she nods, almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” she says softly. “Peter Hale killed Cora in your world. She’s buried in the woods, near the caves.” 

“Derek needs to know. He needs to grieve.” Stiles nods again, feeling more confident in his decision. Unselfish love. That’s what he always wants to have for Derek. “No loopholes,” he says. “No punishments. The task just ends as if it never happened. Can you do that?” 

The witch eyes him for a few moments more, and then says, “It’s a deal.” 

Stiles lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. 

“Are you ready to go back now?” the witch asks. 

“Yeah. Just, can you tell me…” Stiles glances back inside the house. “Is _he_ going to be okay? This Derek, I mean?” 

The witch’s face softens. “He’s going to be fine,” she says, almost gently. “In a moment, you will return home, but this body will stay here. Stiles Stilinski will look up at the stars for a moment, and then he will go back inside and upstairs to his husband.” 

“Other-Stiles,” Stiles says, almost soundlessly. 

The witch rolls her eyes, looking more like the Gemini he knows. “Whatever you want to call him. He has quite a bit to celebrate. You see, just like in your world, a Gemini Witch came to Beacon Hills four days ago, and Stiles Stilinski heard the music and made a wish.” Stiles jerks in surprise and she smiles. “Oh, yes. This world’s Stiles had a heart’s desire. And what do you think that was?” 

“For the doppelgänger to be destroyed,” Stiles says, feeling almost awed. 

“Indeed. His task appeared fairly simple— but, for someone who loves control so much, truly difficult. He had to give up control of his body. To wait and watch, a spectator from within his own mind, seeing everything but never interfering. He did well. A few times he had to restrain himself but he stayed quiet, allowing you to do your work.” 

“He’s _here_? He’s been here the whole time?” Stiles shuts his eyes and casts around in his mind, as if he’s going to find someone locked away in there. This whole time, he hasn’t been alone. 

“He has. You killed the doppelgänger much earlier than I anticipated— he would have had to stay trapped in there while you completed your task, so I’m sure this is a welcome development for him.” The witch chuckles. 

“What would his punishment have been if he’d failed?” 

“To lose Derek forever.” The witch gives Stiles a little shrug. “No matter what universe you go to, the wishes of every Stiles are different. But the punishment, the thing they can’t live without…that’s always the same.” 

Stiles smiles. “And now neither of us will have to live without Derek.” 

“No. This Stiles and Derek are going to live a long, happy life together. They’re going to have many babies, and grow this pack up strong.” 

“Good,” Stiles says. “That’s all I needed to know.” He squares his shoulders. “I’m ready. Send me back.” 

The witch nods, and the sky turns orange. 

This time there’s a split second when Stiles seems to exist outside of space. He’s staring at a mirror image of himself, same in every way except the wedding ring. The man smiles at him and places one hand on Stiles’s shoulder. An incredible feeling of warmth and love floods Stiles’s body. 

And then he blinks and he’s back in the forests of Beacon Hills. 

He can tell right away that this is his own world, the way walking into his own home always feels different than walking into someone else’s. He takes a deep breath of the clean, fresh air and looks down to see his wedding ring, back where it belongs. He knows without having to be told that the Gemini has moved on. He will never see her again. 

He walks out of the woods. Finstock is still running around and Stiles has to yell for him a few times before he finally hears and jogs over. 

“Go home, coach,” Stiles tells him fondly. “You did good.” 

Then Stiles walks all the way back home. 

When he opens the front door to his house, Derek is at the table, bent over a book on witches. “Hey,” he says when he sees Stiles. “No luck at the library?” 

Stiles walks over and buries his face in Derek’s chest. 

“Whoa.” Derek pets his back a little apprehensively. “Honey? Is everything okay?” 

“I just love you,” Stiles mumbles into his shirt. 

“I love you too,” Derek responds automatically. “Did something happen?” 

Stiles pulls away and gestures for Derek to sit. He’s going to tell him about the wish, about Peter and Cora and what’s buried in the woods, and they’ll deal with the fallout together. “Derek,” he says, taking his husband’s hand and holding on tightly. “I have to tell you something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what would have happened if either Stiles didn't complete their task and had to be punished by losing Derek, you ask? They would have been sent to a barren, Sterek-less wasteland of a universe known as Jeff Davis's Teen Wolf Canon. (#alwaysbitter)


	9. Chapter 9

They find Cora in the woods, buried just outside the caves, along with the belongings they had thought she’d taken with her when she left. The entire pack stands in a half-circle as the body is excavated, silently bearing witness. 

Derek stares at the bones of his sister, watching the excavators put her back together on the ground. His face betrays nothing, that stiff and blank mask he’d adopted when Stiles had told him the truth. Stiles isn’t surprised. This is how Derek grieves, locking away his feelings, letting his grief rot in his chest rather than expose his vulnerability. It’s why Stiles and Scott had suspected that Derek had killed Laura years ago, before they’d ever joined his pack. 

The only time Derek betrays any emotion is when they find a clear plastic bag of Cora’s personal belongings, buried with her laptop and some of her clothes. Smiling out at them is a picture of her and Derek taken only a week before she’d been murdered and at the sight of it Derek’s eyes flash a bleeding, angry red. 

Stiles takes his arm and doesn’t say a word. He feels Derek shaking slightly and there’s a very faint growl in each breath he takes. When they bring up her skull he goes completely still, and stays that way until it’s all over. 

They give Derek all of her belongings and transport the bones to the morgue. Derek has already arranged for a plot next to Laura. The girls will be separated from their murderer by their mother’s body, but the thought of Peter even lying there with the family feels wrong, as if his remains are poisoning the ground. 

When everybody leaves Derek walks over to the hole in the ground and sinks to his knees. Stiles gives him a few moments on his own, and then walks over to put a hand on Derek’s back. 

“He would have put you here too,” Derek says without looking up. “You could have been all alone out here for years and I wouldn’t have had a clue.” 

“But I wasn’t, Derek. You saved me.” Stiles drops down in the mud so he can comfort his husband. “You stopped him before he could hurt anyone else. You got justice for Cora and Laura.” 

Derek shakes his head. His face is stretched so tightly with grief every word sounds pained. “I was her brother and her Alpha. She should have come to me but she didn’t. Because she thought I was weak. Because she knew I couldn’t protect her.” 

“It wasn’t like that.” 

“She’s been dead for almost four years. My little sister. Buried in the woods like an animal and I _never knew._ ” Derek rips open the bag of her belongings. Inside are necklaces, pictures, and a copy of the letter Stiles had found on the computer, telling Derek she was going to confront Peter. 

Derek reads the whole thing, then tips his head up to the sky and howls. 

# 

They rebury her the next day. Derek drops a dozen white roses over her casket and then steps back without saying a word. Deaton ends up giving the eulogy; he knew Cora better than anyone except Derek. Stiles can see Derek constantly stealing glances at Peter’s gravestone, at the words **Beloved Brother** carved just under his name. 

When the service ends Derek turns to leave. Then, without warning, he spins around and punches Peter’s stone with all his strength. It shatters, obliterating every word. Max, not really able to understand what’s happening but reacting to the feelings of his Alpha, bursts into tears. 

Derek stares at the shattered gravestone, hand dripping blood. “He doesn’t deserve to be here,” he says tonelessly. “I never should have put him here.” 

“Oh, Derek.” Stiles grabs Derek’s hand, watching it heal before his eyes. 

Derek shakes him off and heads for the woods. Stiles watches him shift just as he gets to the edge of the trees. 

“You want to come home with us?” Scott asks Stiles softly, bouncing his son on his hip. 

Stiles shakes his head. “No. I have to be there when he gets back.” 

He drives back to the house alone. Derek reacted like this after he had killed Peter, and Stiles knows that all he needs is time. It’s impossible to force healing on Derek— he has to come to it in his own way, at his own pace. 

He waits for Derek at the kitchen table. They haven’t spoken much about the failed wish; when Stiles started his story Derek had simply sighed, “Oh, _Stiles_ ,” when Stiles had admitted that he’d sought the witch out. He’d glossed over his decision to bow out of the task, simply telling Derek that he’d decided not to go forward once he’d learned about Cora. He doesn’t want to think about it. He knows Derek isn’t angry at him, and he doesn’t regret his decision, but something in him still hurts when he thinks of what he gave up. 

It’s almost seven o’clock before Derek finally comes through the front door. He nods to Stiles but just keeps walking without saying a word. His footsteps are heavily on the stairs and Stiles hesitates, torn between going after him and letting him be alone. 

He manages to hold out for five minutes before he gives up and takes the steps two at a time. 

He finds Derek sitting on the bed, arms wrapped around himself, crying silently. 

“ _Derek_.” Stiles crawls onto the bed and holds his husband. “Oh, baby. You’re breaking my heart. What can I do?” 

Derek shakes his head. 

“Talk to me, Der. Please.” He rocks his husband, making little soothing sounds, waiting for Derek to find the words he needs. 

“I’m the last Hale,” Derek chokes out finally. “My entire family is gone. All of my blood is in the ground and I…I _let_ it happen to them.” 

Stiles tries to soothe him, his own eyes filling with tears. “You didn’t. Derek, you were a child when the house burned. You were barely a man when Laura died. You can’t blame yourself— ” 

“I let Cora die. I’m the Alpha. I should have known. She should have known to come to me before confronting Peter. She didn’t trust me and it’s my fault she’s dead.” Derek’s shoulders heave up and down. 

“She didn’t tell you because she was furious and she wasn’t thinking straight. Derek, love, you can’t do this. What happened is not your fault.” Stiles strokes his back and keeps rocking the two of them back and forth as each sentence comes out in a choked, pained bite of grief. 

“The Hale family used to be invincible,” Derek says, stubbornly refusing to be comforted. “The Hale blood was strong, and now it ends with the weakest Hale of all.” He closes his eyes and starts to shake again. 

“You may be the last of your blood, but you still have a family.” Stiles puts his head on Derek’s shoulder. “Peter was going to kill me too, and you stopped him. You’ve saved the pack more times than I can count. You’re the Alpha. The only Alpha I would ever choose.” 

Derek reaches for Stiles and holds him for several long minutes more. Stiles continues to stroke his hair and whisper soothing words in his ear until Derek’s sobs fade and stop. 

“What can I do for you?” Stiles asks again once Derek’s eyes are dry and his body has slumped in a sort of peace. 

“Be with me,” Derek says. 

Stiles smiles and uses his thumb to wipe clean the tracks of tears on Derek’s face. “Always.” 

“Let me hold you.” 

Stiles slides onto Derek’s lap. “I can do that,” he says softly. 

Derek captures his hands and brings them up to his lips. “Tell me that I’m not alone.” 

“You’re not alone.” Stiles rests against him, pressing Derek’s thumb against his pulse so Derek can feel that Stiles is still alive and always his. “You are so loved, Derek Hale.” 

Derek kisses his neck. “Show me how much,” he murmurs. 

Stiles twines his arms around Derek’s neck and kisses him, long and slow and deep. He can feel Derek’s hands reaching around to pop open the button of Stiles’s jeans and he grinds against Derek’s lap to encourage him. 

They take it slow. Derek needs to feel Stiles tremble and fall apart under his hands, so Stiles lets it happen, closing his eyes and drifting in the low, warm pool of love he feels whenever Derek is holding him. He whispers his husband’s name as Derek undresses him and begs for his touch, his lips, his tongue. When Derek enters him he lets himself have a moment, just a moment, to imagine that he’s still a mage, and they could be creating a child right now, bringing new life out of grief. 

Then he lets go. 

“Oh, I love you,” Derek breathes. He buries his face in Stiles’s neck, scenting him, as he comes. 

They fall asleep naked, feeding off each other’s heat. In his sleep Derek wraps his arm around Stiles’s midsection and pulls him close, almost purring, hand unconsciously planting over Stiles’s naval and staying there all night long. 

# 

Over the next few weeks, Derek slowly begins to heal. Scott and Kira help, by bringing Maxie over nearly every day. Derek cuddles the little boy, listening to him chatter with a tiny smile on his face. Soon Derek, as Alpha, will start training the pack’s youngest member. Stiles thinks it will be good for him. Derek also visits the Hale plot at least twice a week with fresh flowers for his sister. He replaces Peter’s stone with a small marker that only says “Peter.” “The Hales are a pack and a family bonded by blood and love,” he tells Stiles in explanation. “Peter betrayed our name. He doesn’t get to keep it.” 

Meanwhile, Stiles gets sick. He feels vaguely nauseous for days, and has an inexplicable craving for red meat cooked practically raw. One night, three weeks after Cora’s funeral, he gets out of bed in the morning and promptly has to run to the bathroom to vomit. 

Derek chases after him and smooths back his hair as Stiles retches. “Did you eat something bad?” 

Stiles tries to shake his head, but that just makes him feel even dizzier. “I’ve been feeling gross for a while,” he manages to say between heaves. 

Derek makes a small sound of worry. “I thought you smelled off. I’ll call in sick for you.” 

“Thank you.” Stiles spits in the toilet, trying to clean his mouth out of the taste. Derek returns a few minutes later with a glass of water. 

“I’m taking the day off of work too.” He sits down and waits for Stiles to takes several gulps before taking the glass back. “Can you walk back to the bed, or do you want me to carry you?” 

Stiles blushes. “Oh my God, Der. You didn’t need to call off of work. It’s just a flu bug.” 

“I wanted to.” Without asking again, Derek sweeps Stiles up in his arms. “Don’t argue,” he says simply when Stiles squawks. “My wolf is going nuts right now with you sick. I couldn’t leave this house if you begged me.” 

Stiles sighs and gives up. Derek’s warm chest feels amazing against his cheek and he rests against it. “Cuddle with me,” he says, just a little bit pathetically, when Derek tries to put him under the covers. 

Derek climbs into bed with him and plumps up a pillow under his arm, so Stiles can keep his head against Derek’s chest. “If this lasts longer than twenty-four hours I’m taking you to the doctor.” 

“Mmhm.” Stiles is still feeling a little nauseous, but Derek’s heartbeat under his ear is lulling him into a soothing fugue state. He feels exhausted these days too, and it’s not long before he feels himself on the edge of sleep. “Sorry in advance if I puke on you,” he mutters. 

Derek hums and starts rubbing little circles on his belly. It feels so good that Stiles almost forgets that he’s sick. 

# 

When he wakes up in a few hours he feels much better, so much so that he’s craving steak again. Derek is wary of giving him anything more than saltines, but Stiles pouts at him until he finally gives in. 

“This is pretty weird behavior coming from the man who wanted to work, ‘I promise to make sure you don’t die of heart disease at age forty’ into his wedding vows,” Derek remarks drily as Stiles practically inhales the food. 

“Maybe I’m iron deficient,” Stiles says with his mouth full. 

“You smell…sweet.” Derek leans in for another whiff. “I don’t know, babe. You smell the same way you did this morning. Are you sure you feel better?” 

“Yeah, I feel amazing.” Stiles carves off a chunk of Derek’s steak for himself. “But some vegetables probably wouldn’t hurt. You know what would be delicious right now? A spinach, almond milk, and flax seed smoothie.” 

“Now I’m going to puke,” Derek mutters, blocking Stiles’s fork from stealing another bite. 

After dinner they curl up on the couch to watch a movie. Stiles conks out twenty minutes in and wakes up an hour later to find Derek scenting him deeply, a blissed-out smile on his face. 

“Hey, weirdo.” Stiles wants to pull his head away, but he feels really safe and comfortable where he is. “Am I back to my normal smell, or what?” 

Derek shakes his head. “Still really sweet. But I don’t know. My wolf loves it. Maybe all the steak is pumping up your sperm count or something and my wolf wants to have sex.” 

Capping off their day with an orgasm sounds pretty much perfect, but Stiles doesn’t want to move. “Would your wolf be cool with me just falling asleep here again and then carrying me up to bed?” 

Derek gives him a wolf growl to say yes and Stiles smiles before closing his eyes and nodding off. 

# 

When he wakes up the next morning he throws up again. 

“I’ll make an appointment,” Derek says, bringing in a new glass of water. 

Stiles shakes his head. “I already feel better,” he promises. “I need to go to work before I get fired.” 

Derek gives him an incredulous look. “Well, your boss better be all right with you bringing a plus-one, because there is no way I’m letting you out of my sight.” 

Stiles rolls his eyes and flushes the toilet. “Don’t be such a mother hen, _honey_. I’m totally fine.” He starts the shower and scowls at Derek before shucking off his clothes. “Are you going to watch me to make sure I don’t slip and crack open my head?” 

Derek slinks out of the bathroom, looking like a whipped dog. Stiles showers quickly, already feeling guilty for barking at his husband. When he goes into the bedroom, Derek is sitting on the bed, looking frustrated. 

“I’m sorry I snapped,” Stiles says, slipping on his lap. Derek’s been super tactile lately and he pulls Stiles in close, brushing a droplet of water away from his face. 

“I really think something might be wrong,” Derek tells him seriously. “You’re throwing up, your smell is off, and my wolf…I know we say it as a joke, but my wolf instincts keep telling me you need to be protected and watched over every minute. It’s like my wolf recognizes something that we haven’t yet. It scares me.” 

Stiles sighs. The weird thing is that he feels _different_ , but not _wrong_. He doesn’t want to go to the doctor; the thought of being prodded at and examined is horrifying. “Tomorrow is the pack meeting,” he says “We’ll see if they smell something off.” He smiles and tries to crack a joke. “If Lydia sees me and screams we’ll know that something is really wrong, right?” 

“That’s not funny.” Derek’s brows draw together. 

“Okay. I’m sorry.” 

Derek kisses Stiles’s brow and tries to smile. “Please text me throughout the day. I’ll be going crazy.” 

“I will.” 

When Stiles gets to work he Googles early symptoms of cancer. His mother died of it when he was young, and he knows that it isn’t necessarily hereditary, but he can remember her getting sick and feeling tired all the time too. 

Across town, Derek is doing the same thing. 

They both breathe a sigh of relief when the symptoms don’t match up. Even so, Stiles doesn’t mention to Derek that he had to dash for the toilet twice throughout his workday. 

# 

The next day at the pack meeting Scott keeps throwing suspicious glances Stiles’s way, but nobody else seems to notice anything. Kira is sick as a dog from her pregnancy and for a while her health dominates the discussion. A room full of werewolves all passionately talking about something gets hot quickly, and Stiles feels a little faint. When Kira asks for a glass of water he jumps up, eager to volunteer. 

On his way back into the living room he turns the corner and accidently collides with Aiden. The Beta is a solid wall of muscle and Stiles falls on the floor, dumping water all over himself. 

“Oh, shit.” Aiden extends a hand. “Sorry, man. Are you— ” 

Before Stiles can take his hand Aiden is slammed up against the wall by Derek, whose claws have already come out in a partial shift. Derek roars in his Beta’s face, then leans down and scoops Stiles into his arms. 

“Derek!” Stiles’s face flames as Derek carries him into the living room, nose pressed into Stiles’s neck as he checks him for injuries. “What the hell is wrong with you?” 

The room has fallen completely silent, everyone watching as Derek sits down with his arms around Stiles. Derek bares his teeth warningly at the entire pack and tucks Stiles’s head into his shoulder, stroking his hair soothingly. 

The silence is broken by Maxie giggling in delight, clearly thinking the entire spectacle is some kind of show for his benefit. 

Aiden comes back in the room, looking a little flustered but no worse for the wear. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to run into you, Stiles. I promise, I would never want to hurt— ” 

“Of course you didn’t, Aiden,” Stiles says, his voice muffled by Derek’s shoulder. “Derek just _massively overreacted_ and he’s very sorry. Aren’t you, Alpha Hale?” 

Derek growls. “No.” 

“Derek!’ Stiles pinches his side warningly. “What is the matter with you? Apologize.” 

Derek is still glaring at Aiden. “He hurt you.” 

“He obviously didn’t mean it. Stop being such a D-I-C-K-H-E-A-D and say sorry.” 

Max, by now well aware that grown-ups only spell something out when it’s a naughty word, giggles again. 

“Sorry,” Derek says disingenuously. 

“I’ll be more careful,” Aiden promises. He sits down next to his brother, looking chagrined. 

Stiles tries to wriggle away, but Derek holds him firm and doesn’t let him move for the rest of the meeting. Stiles wants to complain, but he just feels so comfortable and happy when his mate is touching him these days. It’s probably a weird leftover side effect from the spell. 

Scott keeps staring at him, all throughout the meeting, and when they say goodbye he gives Stiles a sudden hug and sniffs into his neck for a good five seconds. 

“Creeper,” Stiles says, pushing him away. 

“Sorry.” Scott looks at him, eyes narrowed. He opens his mouth to say something, then apparently reconsiders. “Talk to you later.” 

# 

Stiles still feels sick on a constant basis, but he manages to avoid throwing up for the large majority of days over the next two weeks. He has to force himself to go to work, as he has a weird desire to just stay home with Derek every day and cuddle. His craving for meat hasn’t let up, and he feels like he’s eating more than ever before. 

For that reason he isn’t particularly surprised when his jeans don’t button on the morning of the next pack meeting. “Oh, great,” he says, frowning at himself in the mirror. “I’m getting a belly.” 

There’s a definite lump of fat where he used to be stick-thin and he cups his hand over it to measure. Derek, getting changed behind him, hums in obvious appreciation and comes up behind him, reaching over to smooth his hands over Stiles’s stomach. “Whoa, okay,” Stiles says. “Clearly _you_ like it.” 

“I like it a _lot_ ,” Derek says, hands almost possessive as he strokes his husband. 

“I guess I need to cut down on the red meat.” 

Derek shakes his head. He keeps touching Stiles and his voice comes out in a low purr, a sign that his wolf has basically taken over. “It’s perfect. Means you’re healthy. Makes you smell so good. Needs to get bigger…” 

“It does not need to get bigger, Derek. I appreciate the love and all, but I feel insecure enough having a supermodel husband.” 

Derek rubs his cheek against Stiles’s. “Pretty mate,” he says. 

“Jesus, you’re feral these days.” Stiles smiles and sneaks a kiss on his werewolf’s lips. “Thanks, baby. I guess I don’t look too bad with it, do I?” The more he looks in the mirror, the more enamored he is with his slightly different figure. “We look good together,” he says to Derek. 

Derek rumbles in agreement and keeps caressing Stiles’s belly. 

# 

This time the pack definitely notices that something is different about Stiles. There’s the little belly, and the way Derek won’t stop touching him, and now everybody is sniffing at him, looking vaguely confused. 

“Are you sick?” Ethan asks him, looking like he wants to touch Stiles’s forehead to check for a fever but obviously too afraid of Derek to try. 

Stiles sighs and details his symptoms. Scott is sitting on the couch, holding Max; Kira is feeling too sick to attend, so she’s upstairs in the bedroom resting. “So, wait,” Scott says. “How long has this been going on.” 

Stiles looks to Derek to confirm. “I guess, like, a month and a half-ish?” 

“So you’re hungry all the time, you feel sick, and Derek, you said he smells _sweet_ to you?” Lydia says, frowning. 

“Yeah, that’s all right.” 

Lydia nods. “Sounds like it could be diabetes.” 

Stiles gapes at her. The idea of it being something so…well… _ordinary_ seems completely strange to him. Strange and terrifying— even though it’s common, diabetes is _serious_. Stiles really doesn’t want to have to poke himself with a needle every day and watch every single thing he eats, always worrying about his blood sugar. “Are you sure?” he asks. 

“Of course not, I’m not a doctor. But I’d get your blood tested ASAP. It wouldn’t hurt to get a full examination done, if you’ve been feeling weird for this long.” 

“She’s right,” Boyd says. “It could be serious.” 

“Why would you let him go this long without taking him for a checkup, Derek?” Erica scowls at her Alpha. 

“You look _exhausted_ ,” Liam adds. 

Stiles’s eyes fill with tears. He feels like he’s being completely ganged up, and even though he knows it’s ridiculous he just wants to curl into a ball and cry. Everyone stops short when they see him getting upset. “I don’t need to go to the doctor,” Stiles says in a small voice. The thought of being poked by a stranger is just as horrific as it was three weeks ago. 

Erica sighs. “Stiles, you’re sick.” 

“I don’t want a doctor,” Stiles repeats. 

“But— ” 

“He said he doesn’t want a doctor,” Derek says firmly. “Back off.” 

Erica glowers at him, eyes flashing. “What the hell, Derek? Whatever happened to Mr. Super-Protective Alpha? He’s _sick_.” 

Derek growls, responding to the challenge. “Nobody’s touching him if he doesn’t want to be touched. Nobody puts their hands on my mate. Understand?” 

“Hey!” Scott says loudly, stepping between the two wolves. “I have an idea. How about I get my mom to do an examination? Stiles, you won’t mind my mom looking you over, right?” 

Stiles considers it. Scott’s mom has been a nurse for years; she knows what she’s doing, and he trusts her. “I guess,” he says. 

Derek huffs slightly, but seems mollified. He sits down, pulling Stiles onto his lap again. Whenever they’re around the other werewolves he’s doing this now, insisting that he has his arms around Stiles in some way. Stiles still feels a little shaky and he clings to his husband. “Nobody’s touching you without your permission,” Derek promises in a low voice. “You’re safe, baby.” He cuddles Stiles, humming something under his breath, and Stiles nearly falls asleep right there in his lap. 

When the pack meeting ends Scott asks Stiles to stay and help him plan Max’s fourth birthday party, which is coming up in a few weeks. Stiles reluctantly agrees— Derek promised to make steaks on the grill tonight— and Derek leaves only after making sure that Stiles is recovered from his near-meltdown. “Dinner will be waiting,” he promises, stroking Stiles’s little belly one more time before he gets in the car and drives off. 

“Okay, team,” Stiles says, clapping his hands together. “I assume we’re going with an Avengers theme here, right? I’m thinking ice-cream cake, along with actual ice cream. Heck, maybe even cupcakes, to service every palate? Maybe the food is too big to tackle now. What should we start with?” 

“This.” Scott tosses something to his friend. “You’re going to go into the bathroom and pee on that. Now.” 

Stiles blinks down at what Scott’s given him: a pregnancy test. “Scott, come on. Are you kidding?” 

“Not even a little.” 

“This is kind of mean.” Stiles has talked about his longing for a biological child with Scott before, and weeks ago he shared the entirety of his Gemini-adventure with his friend. It isn’t like Scott to be so cavalier with Stiles’s feelings. 

“Stiles, I’ve gone through one and a half werewolf pregnancies. I’m a freaking expert. Kira has been craving practically raw steak since the day we think we conceived. She’s obviously puking her guts out—” a vomiting sound comes from upstairs to underscore the point, and Scott winces. “She smells, to me, like that organic chocolate shop they used to have downtown, and _you_ smell like French bread, but I imagine that you smell to Derek exactly way Kira smells to me. Oh, and Derek’s weird-ass behavior? That’s just a slightly exaggerated version of how I feel when my wife is pregnant. When Maxie was cooking in there I wouldn’t let her out of my sight. We showered together every day!” 

Max giggles so hard at that he almost falls off the couch. 

“Scott, it’s not possible. Maybe I’m, like, hysterically pregnant or something?” 

“No, I think you’re pregnant pregnant. Now pee on the stick.” 

“Pee!” Max shrieks, beside himself with joy at the wonders of telling a grown-up to go potty. 

Stiles rolls his eyes and marches into the bathroom. He wants to just get this over with. Of course he wishes he was carrying a baby. Of course he’s been thinking of how closely his symptoms are mirroring a pregnancy. But he’s been careful to keep himself from actually letting himself imagine, because it hurts too much. 

He reads the instructions on the box, then sticks the test under his urine stream. Ridiculous. It’s probably diabetes, like Lydia said. Or something worse. Scott’s going to feel like such an ass when he learns that what he’d thought was a baby is actually some kind of tumor… 

Stiles glances down at the stick once the waiting period is up, ready to toss it into the garbage can. 

And screams. 

Seconds later the door is practically knocked off its hinges by two werewolves, one looking about ready to shift and one looking as ferocious as his little three-year-old face can manage. 

“Stiles!” Scott gasps. Max grabs his uncle around the legs and holds on tight. “Are you okay?” 

Stiles holds out the test wordlessly. “Scott… _how_?” 

“I’m not touching something you peed on. Does it say positive?” 

Stiles nods, stunned past words. 

“I knew it!” Scott picks up his son and twirls him around. “Max, we totally called it!” 

“This is impossible,” Stiles says numbly. 

“Who cares? It’s happening! 

_Stiles_ cares. He’d finally thought he could let go of this dream, and now it’s appearing before him, gift-wrapped. _How_? He shuts his eyes and thinks back. 

There had been that moment with Other-Stiles, when he’d touched Stiles’s shoulder and made him feel all warm. Like a little bit of magic, just a little spark, was being transferred to him. 

The witch had given him seven days to conceive a child _with his husband_. She hadn’t specified that it had to be in the alternate reality. 

Could it be? 

Stiles grins and hugs the pregnancy test to his heart, finally able to believe. He’s pregnant. He’s pregnant with his husband’s baby. Derek won’t be the last of the Hale blood after all. Stiles is finally going to have his heart’s desire. 

And all because of that witch, that wonderful, beautiful, perfect witch. 

She’d found a loophole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter is going to be some super fluffy Sterek mpreg, which I've basically wanted to write since I got into this fandom a year ago. Very excited to give it a shot!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being SO long. Thanks all for your patience!

When Scott drops Stiles off at home, Derek is out on the deck, grilling their steaks for dinner. Stiles walks out to him slowly. He feels almost fragile, now that he knows what’s inside of him. 

Derek smiles at him as he presses the spatula to the steaks. “Party all planned?” 

Stiles smiles back. He used to imagine of ways to tell Derek he was pregnant, scouring the internet for cutesy little ideas. Now he just walks over and kisses him, tugging him away from the grill gently. When Derek reaches for his hand, he presses the pregnancy test into it. 

Derek breaks away. “What’s this?” 

“Surprise,” Stiles says softly. 

Derek’s eyes flicker from the test to Stiles’s face, trying to see if he’s really serious. “Stiles,” he says, voice gentle. “Where did you get this?” 

“I took it at Scott’s house.” 

“Oh, Stiles…” Derek puts the test down on the railing. He looks almost heartbroken, as if he isn’t quite sure how to tell Stiles that it isn’t real. 

“You wolf knows, Derek. He’s known for weeks.” Stiles guides Derek’s hands to his stomach. “You _know_ what this is. We’re having a baby.” 

“You didn’t complete the task,” Derek says, still in that gentle voice. 

“Actually, I think I kind of _did_.” Stiles fills Derek in on that moment before he’d come back to his world. “I’m a spark,” he says. “There’s enough magic in my body to sustain the pregnancy. I just needed a little bit more to make it happen.” 

Derek shakes his head. “God, baby, I wish…you know I wish that you could be, but you can’t get your hopes up…” 

“Scott already called his mom, and they’re setting up an ultrasound at Deaton’s clinic tomorrow. But Derek, it’s real. I know it is. _You_ know it is.” Stiles leans his forhead against Derek’s. He feels all warm from the inside out. “Just take a minute,” he says. “Put your ear up against my belly. Listen. _Feel_. Your baby is right under your hands right now.” 

Derek sighs. “I’m going to kill Scott,” he mutters, but he obediently sinks down to his knees and presses his ear against Stiles’s bump. 

“Just take a minute,” Stiles says. 

“The steaks are going to burn— ” 

“Just be quiet for a second.” 

Derek rolls his eyes but presses in even closer. He waits for a minute, humoring Stiles, and then finally looks up at him again. “There’s nothing, Stiles,” he says. “I’m sorry, love. I wish with all my heart I could tell you there is. But— ” his face changes. 

Stiles holds his breath. “Derek?” 

Derek’s lips barely move. “I hear a heartbeat.” 

“You hear it?” Stiles’s eyes well up with tears. “You hear our baby?” 

“I hear our baby. Oh, my God.” Derek pulls up Stiles’s shirt so he can press up even closer to the bump. “Stiles, I can hear our baby’s heartbeat.” 

“We did it, Derek.” Stiles hugs his husband around his neck, and, okay, now he’s crying. 

“ _You_ did it.” Derek kisses his belly, eyes shining. 

The steaks are burned to hockey pucks by the time they finally get around to eating, but Stiles still eats the entire thing plus half of Derek’s. 

He’s eating for two, after all. 

# 

Deaton is practically beside himself with excitement, which, for him, means that there’s a little smile on his face and he peppers Stiles with a hundred questions as he helps him up on the steel table in his clinic. 

“Alan, stop it,” Melissa, Scott’s mother, sighs as she bats him away. “He’s not a science project.” 

“I don’t mind.” Stiles leans back on his elbows and lets Melissa pull up his shirt. Derek steps in close to place a supporting hand against his back. They’ve turned the clinic into a maternity ward before, when Kira was pregnant and they’d all been a little wary of taking a werewolf fetus into the hospital. It was always better to just avoid questions. 

“It’s just so fascinating,” Deaton says, eyes aglow. “You’re sure you haven’t developed any other abilities since the wish? The idea that the magic is localized in your body to allow your pregnancy…it’s so uncommon.” 

“Let’s not question it,” Derek mutters, eyes fixed on the screen as Melissa starts to move the wand over Stiles’s gel-coated stomach. 

“We might not get a clear picture,” Melissa warns. “Usually for an ultrasound this early we’d do it vaginally, but that’s obviously not an option here, so…” she trails off as a fuzzy image comes into view and the boys hear a quick, steady thumping. 

Deaton leans in. “Would you look at that.” 

“There’s the heartbeat,” Melissa says. Stiles grips Derek’s hand, staring at the screen. The baby doesn’t look like much yet, but he thinks he can tell where the head is. “I’d say based on the size you’re probably about ten weeks along. Does that sound right?” 

Stiles counts back in his head and nods, unable to tear his eyes away from the baby. “Does he look normal?” 

Melissa smiles, used to pregnancy-anxiety. “Absolutely.” 

“Does it look the way a female womb would look?” Derek asks. 

“It does. I think the only concern is that there’s no cervix— and, of course, no vagina. That shouldn’t be a problem for the baby’s development, but it does beg the questions of how the baby is going to be delivered.” 

“We’ll have to do it by C-Section,” Deaton says, flapping his hand at the question as if it’s of no import. “I’m more interested in how the sperm came through if there’s no cervix. And, of course, where the egg came from to be fertilized.” 

“Magic,” Stiles says in his best _ah-duh_ voice. 

“Even magic is ruled by logic, Stiles.” 

“You take the fun out of everything.” Stiles finally looks away from the screen and to Deaton. “I remember some of this from when Maxie was born, but what’s different about a werewolf fetus from a human fetus? I mean, what should I expect?” 

Deaton nods to the screen. “You can hear that the heartbeat is slightly faster. Gestation time is typically the same, but the fetus matures faster. The final two months in the womb simply allow the child to develop the strength it will need for its werewolf powers. Kira has had severe morning sickness problems, but I can’t say for sure if that’s characteristic of all werewolf pregnancies or just something specific to her. You’ll be craving protein, especially since you yourself are not a werewolf and don’t have the natural strength typically needed to sustain this sort of pregnancy. You’ll have strong nesting urges, if those haven’t begun already— basically your body will be urging you to prepare your cave, so to speak, for your cub.” Deaton looks at Derek. “And _you_ , dear Alpha, will be extraordinarily overprotective of your mate. Try to battle it down; it’s exhausting for everyone.” 

Derek grunts. 

“I want you in here for checkups as often as possible,” Deaton tells Stiles. “I don’t want to scare you, but this is uncharted waters. If something goes wrong we won’t easily be able to tell— you won’t spot, the way you would if you were a female. Exposure to magic, or a lack of exposure to magic, could have adverse effects. If you have even the _slightest_ feeling that something might be wrong, call me immediately.” 

“And you say I shouldn’t be overprotective,” Derek mutters. 

Stiles just smiles. He’s not worried. The witch said if he got pregnant in seven days, he could keep the baby. He has no doubt that this little magic spark is going to make it all the way through. “It’s not going to, like, shift in my stomach, is it?” 

“Born werewolves don’t shift until they hit puberty, Stiles, you know that.” Derek shakes his head at his mate. 

“Excuse me for wanting to make sure I won’t have a wolf clawing at me from the inside out,” Stiles grumbles, blushing. 

Derek smirks and rubs at the blood in Stiles’s cheeks. “Sounds to me like you’re getting pregnancy brain already.” 

Stiles points a warning finger at his husband. “Say that again and you’ll meet my pregnancy hormones.” 

Melissa smiles as she wipes off Stiles’s belly. “You boys are going to be just fine.” 

# 

They tell the pack at Max’s birthday party. Everyone is overjoyed, particularly when they finally put together why Derek has been acting so overprotective. Lydia especially is fascinated with the magic involved, so much so that she doesn’t leave him alone for the entire party. By the time they finally leave Stiles feels more than a little nauseous, and he remembers what Deaton said about nesting urges. He already just wants to burrow down at home for the next seven months, but he knows that isn’t an option. 

After a lengthy argument with Derek, Stiles decides to talk to his boss about his pregnancy. Derek thinks he should just leave his job and live like a hermit until the baby is delivered, but Stiles loves what he does. He’s been the Beacon Hills Victim/Witness Coordinator and head Legal Researcher for the district attorney for eight years now. It’s a great job, mostly because half of the crime victims he sees are the victim of something distinctly supernatural, so he can interview them about their experiences to prepare the pack to face whatever new horror is in town, but also because he works closely with the Beacon Hills PD, where Derek is a deputy and Stiles’s dad is the sheriff. 

“Just don’t tell her you’re pregnant,” Derek begs as Stiles gets dressed for work. “Make something up.” 

“I’m not lying to my boss.” 

“Soon the entire town will know. They’ll be calling in scientists from all over to examine you…” 

“Derek, Beacon Hills is full of so much unexplained shit that the nationwide media has us on some sort of Blocked Caller list. Nobody outside of Beacon Hills wants to deal with our supernatural nonsense, and the people here have gotten to the point where they just shrug it off. You really think a town that was terrorized by an actual Heatmiser monster last winter will care about my magic uterus?” 

“I’d rather not risk it.” 

Stiles rolls his eye and drops a kiss on Derek’s forehead. “You’re being very overprotective and it’s only the size of a little pea. We have seven months to go, so cool it.” 

“I will not cool it when we’re talking about my child.” 

“ _Our_ child, and I seriously can’t deal with a caveman husband for seven months. I’m not an idiot, and I can take care of myself. Don’t treat me like a child.” 

Derek catches his hand. “Hey,” he says seriously. “I trust you with our baby. I’ll try to keep the wolf under control. Okay?” 

Stiles smiles, mollified. “Okay.” 

“But I reserve the right to ask for hourly updates.” 

“And I reserve the right to call you insane.” Stiles blows him a kiss and grabs his briefcase. “Don’t stress too hard without me.” 

# 

His boss barely blinks when Stiles tells her that he’s two months pregnant. “Will it be human?” she asks, then reconsiders the question. “Is that considered an impolite question in your…circle of acquaintances?” 

“It’ll be mostly human,” Stiles tries. 

“Mostly?” 

“All the important bits will be human.” 

“Fascinating,” she says. “I’ve always wondered…are _you_ human?” 

Stiles laughs. “Mostly.” 

She accepts that and moves on. They work out an arrangement: Stiles will continue working until he’s noticeably showing, and then an intern will take over the day-to-day of the Victim/Witness office. Stiles will get the LexisNexis legal database installed on his laptop, so he can continue his legal research from home and still receive his paycheck. Then, once the baby is born, he can take regular paternity leave. 

“Also, I think there might be a mermaid living in my pool,” the DA tells him with a straight face, evidently serious. “Can you send one of your guys over to check it out?” 

Stiles leaves her office and texts Derek: _Good to go._

The reply comes immediately: _Google says your breasts should be sore now. Are they? You haven’t mentioned that._

 _Stiles: I have breasts?! Thank you, Google, for telling me. Also, get off Google._

 _

Derek: Your chest. Man nipples. Whatever. Are they sore? 

Stiles: Now that I’m thinking about it, kind of. 

Derek: I’ll come over now and massage them. 

Stiles: It scares me that you’re serious. 

Derek: Also your dad wants to know why I’m so distracted. You want to invite him over for dinner to tell him? 

Stiles: Yes! Let’s make steak. 

Derek: NO. 

Derek: I can’t believe I’m the one saying no to steak. We’ll find something else with protein. 

Derek: There’s protein in fish, right? 

Derek: Can you eat fish? 

Derek: Be right back, I’m asking Google. 

Derek: DON’T EAT FISH! 

Derek: Damn it Stiles why aren’t you answering? 

Derek: Are you eating fish? 

Derek: I’m on my way.

_

# 

The next morning Stiles checks Derek’s search history: 

_My wife is pregnant what should I do_

 _My wife is pregnant what can she eat_

 _

Why do pregnant women throw up 

My wife is pregnant and seems fine but I’m worried about hormones 

My wife is pregnant is it normal that I want to have sex 

My wife is pregnant can we have sex 

My wife is pregnant can we have anal sex 

My wife is pregnant can I give her a blowjob 

How do I delete internet history

_

Stiles shakes his head in disbelief. He’s told Derek like a thousand times that he doesn’t have to phrase his questions like he’s asking them to some little man in the computer, but his werewolf refuses to learn. “You didn’t delete your history,” he teases when Derek walks past. 

“Leave me alone,” Derek says. “Google taught me how to give you that foot massage you liked so much last night, so I wouldn’t complain if I were you.” 

It _had_ been a pretty great foot massage, so Stiles closes the window without another word and joins his mate for breakfast. 

# 

At three months, Derek and Stiles put up a whiteboard in the kitchen. They draw a line down the middle, mark **Boy** on one side and **Girl** on the other. Every time they unconsciously refer to their baby with a gender, they put a check mark in the appropriate column. 

“I do want it to be a surprise, though,” Stiles says, resting his hands over his swelling bump. He’s getting bigger than he expected, and he’ll probably have to take off work earlier than he planned. 

“I’m fine with that.” Derek hugs him around his middle. “I’m starting the nursery this weekend. Is cream okay for the walls?” 

“Sounds great. I can help, you know.” 

“Stiles, if you walk into a room with paint fumes, I’ll probably wolf out and drag you into the hallway with my teeth before I even know what’s happening.” 

Stiles rolls his eyes but leans into his husband’s embrace. He loves that they’re having arguments about paint fumes. He loves that Derek is going to be putting together a nursery for their baby. He loves the way Derek listens to their baby’s heartbeat every night before bed, pressing his ear up against Stiles’s belly and then whispering goodnight to the bump. 

He loves wondering how many other Dereks and Stiles, in different universes, are doing the exact same thing. 

# 

At four and a half months, the baby kicks for the first time. They’ve just come back from a checkup at the clinic, and Stiles is in a fantastic mood. The baby looks perfect, everything full formed and getting bigger by the day, about the size of a sixth-month human fetus. “Remember that fetal werewolves have excellent hearing, so talk to your baby as much as possible, Deaton tells them as he prints out a sonogram. “Studies show that they respond very positively to their parents’ voices.” 

Stiles didn’t have to be told twice, and he’s been chattering to the baby all the way home. Derek smiles, but there’s something a little sad in his eyes. “What’s wrong with you?” Stiles asks as Derek pulls into the driveway. 

“Nothing.” 

“Don’t lie to me.” Stiles follows him into the kitchen. 

Derek sits at the table. “It’s Cora’s birthday,” he says quietly. 

Stiles sits too and takes Derek’s hand. 

“Every year I would make her a birthday card, even though I didn’t know where to send it. She loved homemade cards, ever since she was little. This is the first year that I know she’ll never see it.” Derek sighs. “I have every one I’ve made but couldn’t give her in my office. I just can’t throw them out.” 

“Let’s each make one for her.” 

Derek shakes his head. “We don’t have to. She’s dead, I know that, but I’m scared that I’ll forget her…” 

“We’ll make cards for her.” Stiles stands, needing to brace a hand against his back to support himself. “You’re right. We shouldn’t forget our family. I want our baby to know and love her aunts and grandmothers and uncles and grandfather, even if she never got a chance to meet them.” 

Derek gives him a real smile now. “Thank you.” 

“I’ll get the craft stuff.” Stiles walks towards the closet. “You want to help make a birthday card for Aunt Cora?” he coos to his bump. 

In response he feels something like a little nudge against his skin. It’s such a foreign, indescribable feeling that he stops short, hand plastering over his belly in amazement. 

“Stiles?” Derek must be able to hear his heartrate speed up because he jumps to Stiles’s side, teeth bared. 

“She’s kicking,” Stiles whispers. 

“What? She is? Are you sure?” 

“She did— when I was talking to her. Here, put your hand…” Stiles puts Derek’s hand on his stomach. “I don’t know if you’ll be able to feel it yet but let me try…” he bends down a little and softens his voice. “Did you kick for your daddies, little peanut? Can you do it again? You want to say hello to Daddy?” 

The baby’s foot nudges again right against Derek’s hand. 

“Oh my God,” Derek breathes. 

“You are so strong!” Stiles croons, caressing his belly and wishing he was holding his baby in his arms right now. 

“She can really hear us.” Derek nuzzles his face against Stiles’s belly as if he’s scenting the baby. “Hello in there, baby. It’s Daddy. You like hearing Daddy talk?” 

Two nudges come one right after the other. 

“Are you going to be Daddy?” Stiles asks Derek. 

“Huh?” 

“Well, she can’t call each of us Daddy. One is going to have to be, I don’t know, Papa or something.” 

Derek kind of grimaces. “I don’t want to be Papa. It sounds like Papa Bear, and, I don’t know, I just don’t like it.” 

“You should be Daddy,” Stiles says. “Daddy Derek.” “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah. It just sounds right, doesn’t it?” 

Derek nods. All traces of his earlier sorrow are gone in the wake of this new wonder. “You knew right when Daddy needed cheering up, didn’t you?” he says to the baby. 

“I can be Baba, or, I don’t know…Abba?” 

“Like the Swedish band?” 

“I think it’s Greek for Daddy.” 

Derek really grimaces this time. “Not a fan.” 

“In German it’s _vater_.” 

“That sounds like you’re yelling at her.” 

“I like Baba,” Stiles says. “It’s sort of babble-y, and maybe we’ll change it when she gets older and starts calling you ’dad’ or whatever, but for now it feels right.” 

“Daddy and Baba,” Derek agrees. 

The baby kicks. 

“Oh, God,” Stiles says, suddenly struck with an awful thought. “Imagine how hard it’s going to be to pick a _name_.” 

# 

At five months, Stiles develops an online-shopping addiction. He buys so many baby onesies that his credit card company calls him to see if his card has been stolen. Derek can’t really complain, seeing as he dropped three thousand dollars on an antique rocking chair that he swore smelled just like the woods, but a few more Google searches show up in his history: 

_How much do babies cost_

 _How many onesies should my newborn have_

 _

My wife is pregnant and keeps buying baby stuff 

How to have a shopping intervention 

Is it okay to hold an intervention for a pregnant person

_

“I just want our baby to have the best of everything,” Stiles explains during Derek’s attempted one-person intervention, a little huffily. The baby kicks him in agreement. 

“You bought a onesie that says _Daddy’s Little Squirt_. There’s no universe where that’s a sane purchase.” 

“It’s cute.” 

Derek shakes his head. “It’s gross and weird. Where are you even finding some of these? You bought a onesie with the Italian flag on it.” 

“I want our baby to be cultured!” 

“At this point we’ll have so many that he won’t even be able to wear them before he’s grown out of them!” 

“Two points in the boy column,” Stiles says. “And I want our baby to be the best-dressed kid in Beacon Hills. We’re gay, I think it’s expected.” 

Derek glowers at him. “I love you dearly, but I really hate stereotypes.” 

Stiles holds up a onesie that says _I Love My Daddies_. He blinks innocently at his husband. “I found some specifically for children of same-sex parents. Look how adorable.” 

Derek sighs and gives in. He takes the onesie and neatly folds it before carrying them all upstairs to the baby’s dresser. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” he calls. 

Stiles grins and puts his hand up against his belly so the baby can give him a high-five. He’s pretty lucky, period. 

# 

Six months into his pregnancy, Stiles decides he was an idiot for ever actually longing for this. 

Yeah, the tiny life is his belly is amazing and a miracle and blah blah blah. He’s happy, but on a much more real, everyday level, he’s kind of miserable. Everything hurts, and he’s still throwing up, even though morning sickness usually ends by this point in the pregnancy, and his hormones have gone absolutely nuts. 

He takes off of work and is immediately hit with some kind of pre-partum depression. Even though his new wolfy instincts just want to stay at home, he’s so lonely that he has to drag himself down to the police station almost every day to be with Derek and his father. Weird shit makes him emotional. He babysits Max one day and they find a turtle in the backyard. Max is thrilled and tells Stiles that he’s going to keep it as his pet forever, and when Stiles tries to explain to Max that the turtle probably has a family looking for him he starts crying at the thought of the turtle being far away from home. 

Max immediately puts the turtle down and tries to comfort his uncle, but all Stiles can think about is the turtle’s parents wondering if he’ll ever come back. He knows rationally that it’s idiotic, but he can’t help it. 

Max pats his baby bump. “Momma’s baby makes her sad sometimes too,” he says knowingly. 

“It’s not the baby making me sad, buddy.” 

“I think because babies cry after they’re born they probably cry in their momma’s bellies but nobody can hear them so the mommas have to cry for them,” Max explains. 

Stiles kind of snorts and wipes at his eyes. “Maxie, you are your father’s son,” he says. He remembers Scott trying to explain the ways of the world to Stiles when they were little, only to greatly misstate just about everything. It wasn’t until Stiles was in elementary school that he learned mountains were not, in fact, the burial mounds of dinosaurs. 

Max climbs into his lap and Stiles immediately feels a little bit better. It’s all going to be worth it when he’s holding his own son or daughter in his arms, and his little peanut is playing with Scott and Kira’s kid just the way Scott and Stiles had played together. He can handle the hormones and the morning sickness and the back pain. 

Even if he thinks it might kill him. 

The turtle escapade is nothing compared to the Great Disney Meltdown. Stiles realizes that they have no movies appropriate for a child and texts Derek, telling him to stop by Wal-Mart and buy some DVDs so they can start watching them and figure out which ones they should show their baby. Derek, unable to do things by halves, comes home with four bags filled with every animated movie made in the past thirty years. 

“What should we start with?” Stiles sorts through the bags, grinning as he remembers watching these classics as a kid. “What’s your favorite?” 

Derek shrugs. “I never really watched TV growing up. We were pretty outdoorsy. I watched part of _The Little Mermaid_ once when I was really sick on the couch and couldn’t find the remote…” 

“What? That’s nuts.” Stiles holds out one of the bags to his husband. “Just pick one at random and we’ll do it that way.” 

Derek shuts his eyes, reaches in and pulls out _Peter Pan 2: Return to Neverland_. “I never saw the first _Peter Pan_ ,” he says, sounding legitimately worried. “Will I be able to follow the plot?” 

Stiles snorts and sticks the movie in the player. “I think you can figure it out. The first movie is kind of racist anyway, to be honest.” He joins his husband on the couch, pulling a blanket over them both. “You’re going to love this.” 

Twenty minutes later Stiles is sobbing into his husband’s chest with such intensity that he’s soaked the fabric of his shirt all the way through the his skin. 

“Uh.” Derek pats his back while fumbling for the remote. “There, there,” he tries weakly. 

Stiles lets out a phlegmy wail. He’d started tearing up when the parents had to send their children out of London to protect them from falling bombs during WWII, and lost his damn mind when Wendy’s daughter, upon learning she was to be sent away, had screamed at her mother that she didn’t believe in her mother’s stories about Neverland, because the world was just a dark and evil place. “Jane d-doesn’t believe in fairies,” he chokes out. 

Derek hugs him, bewildered. “It’s only a movie.” 

“Wendy thinks Jane hates her,” Stiles sobs. He isn’t sure how to put into words just what about the movie is ripping his heart into little pieces. 

Derek desperately fast-forwards the movie. “No, look, it gets better. Jane goes to Neverland and hangs out with the elf guy…” 

“But the kids on the train getting sent out of London don’t come back.” 

“Of course they do!” Derek fast-forwards again, growling when he hits the credits. “Maybe they don’t show it, but they all come back and their parents are waiting for them on the train platform and it’s really beautiful, I promise.” 

“No, they never come home. That r-really happened, the parents had to send their kids away, and some of them never came back because their dads died in the war and their moms got b-bombed!” 

Derek rubs his back. “Stiles,” he says, “I promise you, we will never ever ever send our baby away.” 

Stiles sniffles. “Promise?” 

“Promise. She has a werewolf and a spark for her daddies. She’ll _always_ be safest with us, so we won’t ever have to put her on a train. And she’ll always believe in fairies, because she’ll be a damn werewolf.” Derek nods, pleased with this. “And I promise that no flying preteen is ever going to kidnap her from her bedroom, either.” 

With another long-suffering snuffle, Stiles finally pulls away from Derek’s shirt. “I don’t like to think about her ever not having us around,” he explains, voice cracking. “We were separated from our parents when we were young and I just…I can’t think about…” He collapses into tears again. 

“That is not going to happen.” Derek brushes away his tears. “She is never going to lose you, because I’m never going to let anything hurt you _or_ her. And I know that you’ll never let anything happen to me either.” His hands stroke over Stiles’s belly soothingly. “She can tell when you’re upset, love. Feel the way she’s kicking? She’s saying that she isn’t going to let anything happen to us either.” 

Stiles gives a watery laugh and rubs the sore spot on his belly, where the baby’s foot is relentlessly drumming. “Sorry, peanut,” he says to his bump. He glances up at his husband. “We have to add, like, a hundred checkmarks to the girl column.” 

“I think it’s a girl. Official prediction.” 

Stiles nods. “I think so, too. Which is all the more reason why we have to watch these movies. I want to battle casual sexism right from the start with her, and God knows there’s probably plenty lurking in old-school Disney.” 

“Let’s watch something with less parent-child separation,” Derek suggests. Stiles can see him shove _Finding Nemo_ under the couch with his foot. “Okay…here’s _The Lion King_?” 

“Oh God, no. His dad dies.” 

“Fuck. Uh, okay, _Anastas_ — wait, _the_ Anastasia? The murdered princess? Why would they make a movie out of that? Um…superheroes! _The Incredible_! This has to be our winner.” 

“The dad gets captured and his wife and kids are on a plane and the bad guy blows it up and he thinks they’re all dead…” 

“Jesus. These are kids’ movies? Who greenlights this shit? Moving on. Where’s the one with the cats just being cats? That one looked fun.” 

Stiles shakes his head “ _The Aristocats_? They get separated from their owner and have to find their way back to her, even when it’s raining, and they get really lost and there’s a bunch of homeless cats…” 

Derek stares at him. “Is that sad?” 

“ _Yes._ ” 

Derek growls and tosses the DVD across the room. “There has to be a movie in here that isn’t traumatizing,” he vows. “ _Toy Story 2_?” 

Stiles instantly hears “When Somebody Loved Me” in his head and starts crying. 

Derek looks half-crazed. “ _Up_?” 

Stiles starts laughing and crying at the same time. “No fucking way,” he manages to say. 

“ _The Swan Princess,_ ” Derek begs. 

Stiles considers it. Sure, Odette’s dad dies, but he thinks he can handle it. Besides, the prince’s name is Derek, and he kind of likes the little hints of feminism so uncommon in nineties children’s movies. “Okay,” he agrees. 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m sure.” 

Derek pops it in, looking relieved. “Tomorrow let’s just watch _Saving Private Ryan_ and save ourselves the trauma,” he grumbles and the music starts playing. 

Stiles ends up conking out twenty minutes in, exhausted from his hormonal episode. He wakes up to Derek carrying him to bed. “Did you cry?” he mumbles. 

“No. But I liked the puffin. It was cute. Now go back to sleep.” 

In the morning Stiles finds a new Google search in their history: _My wife is pregnant and hormonal help me._

# 

When Stiles is seven months pregnant, Kira gives birth to twins. She and Scott had known, but kept it a secret from everyone, and Stiles shrieks so loudly when he walks into Scott and Kira’s bedroom, where they’d had a home delivery, Derek instinctively grabs him and tries to whisk him out the door. 

“No, Derek, look! Babies! Babies, plural!” 

Derek stares into the overlarge bassinet, where two little babies with Scott’s crooked jaw are sweetly holding hands. 

“Meet Sam and Mari McCall-Yukimura,” Kira says. The baby on the right cracks open her eyes and makes a little sound of interest. Scott gently scoops her up and shows her to Derek. “My daughter,” he says, voice a little cracked from exhaustion and emotion. “Your newest Beta.” 

The minute his sister is removed from his side, Sam lets out a wail. Scott gives Mari to Derek and picks up the little boy. “Your newest godson,” he says to Stiles, carefully putting the baby into Stiles’s arms. 

Stiles hushes the baby, marveling at how his skin feels like velvet. “Both werewolves?” he asks, speaking softly, as if he’s in the presence of a miracle. 

“Both werewolves. We won’t know if they have kitsune powers for a long time, like with Max, but they’re strong and healthy and absolutely perfect.” Scott takes his baby girl back and nuzzles her against his chest, unable to take his eyes off of her. “It was a long labor. Kira did amazing.” 

“Max is with my mother,” Kira says. She looks just as exhausted and happy as Scott. “We’ll introduce him to his new siblings tonight.” 

Stiles’s baby delivers a particularly painful kick to his ribs and he winces. “I think Baby Hale wants to come out and play with her new friends,” he says, giving Sam to Derek to he can rub his belly. 

“You’re more than welcome to come over and change the twins’ diapers to prepare for werewolf poops,” Scott tells him cheerfully, letting Kira hold Mari when the baby starts to fuss. 

“Wait, do werewolf babies poop more, or something?” Stiles and Derek exchange worried looks. They’ve been reading plenty of baby books, but there are bound to be differences between werewolf and human babies. Derek doesn’t remember much from when his siblings were little, only that his mother had to carry the babies around nearly all day because they didn’t like being left alone. 

“Nah, I’m kidding. All you need to remember for werewolf babies is that they need attention.” Scott reaches out for his son. “For example, _this_ little guy just loves Daddy’s voice, yes he does, so if he doesn’t hear Daddy talking he starts crying. That means Daddy has to talk and talk and talk to keep his babies happy.” 

“It’s true,” Kira adds. “Max could be calmed down as soon as one of us started talking to him, about anything, and it already looks like the twins are the same way.” 

“We already talk to the baby a lot,” Stiles saying, grinning at Derek. Derek reads the bump a bedtime story nearly every night now, mostly because the baby is crazy active at night and is keeping Stiles from being able to fall asleep. Now the baby tires itself out kicking at the sound of Derek’s voice, so Stiles is able to grab a few hours of sleep before it starts up again. 

“Then you’re all set.” The baby in Scott’s arms lets out a tiny yawn and Scott places him back in the bassinet. Mari joins him moments later. “Hurry up with that baby, dude. The McCall-Yukimura family is getting pretty excited to meet him.” 

The baby kicks Stiles again, as if telling her packmates that she’s getting pretty eager, too. 

# 

By month eight Stiles is barely able to move without one werewolf or three humans helping him. He’s often cranky, and a bout of hemorrhoids nearly sends him over the edge. 

Derek has the patience of a saint, though Stiles tracks his Google searches to see how he’s _really_ feeling: 

_Breathing exercises for a pregnant woman_

 _Breathing exercises for a pregnant woman’s husband_

 _

Is it normal for pregnant women to yell a lot 

My wife is pregnant how do I cheer her up 

My wife is pregnant should I buy her flowers or will the smell make her sick

_

“You can buy me flowers,” Stiles says to Derek over dinner, feeling a little guilty after a particularly intense one-sided shouting match after Derek had bought Moose Track ice cream instead of Rocky Road. “But really I should buy _you_ flowers.” 

Derek shakes his head. “You’re doing the hard work here. Really, you’ve done all the hard work throughout. If you hadn’t found the witch, we wouldn’t be having our baby. The least I can do is let you yell at me.” 

Stiles sighs and pats his belly. The baby is turning somersaults, apparently having a grand old time where she is. “I really wish it was time,” he says. “There’s a lot I love about being pregnant, but I’m ready to start the next part.” 

Derek takes his hand. “Three more weeks before Deaton says we can deliver.” 

“Three more weeks,” Stiles agrees. 

# 

Finally, nine months after Stiles bowed out of the task, Deaton says that it’s time. 

Deaton will be performing the C-section, with Melissa assisting. Scott waits outside, just in case something goes terribly wrong and they need backup. Stiles feels oddly Zen as he lies on the table and Deaton prepares him. 

“You shouldn’t feel any pain,” Deaton says as he lifts the scalpel. Stiles gulps and nods. Derek grips his hand. “I love you,” he says, not taking his eyes off of Deaton. 

“I love you too.” 

He doesn’t feel any pain, but he does feel _something_. He can’t describe it as either pleasant or unpleasant, so he just grits his teeth and waits. 

“Here’s the womb,” Deaton says, sounding awed even from behind his surgical mask. “Oh, I can— I can _feel_ the magic. It’s like it’s pulsating…” 

“Cut it open,” Derek says between clenched teeth. Deaton jerks slightly, as if he’s entranced by what he’s seeing, and bends back over his task. 

Stiles looks up at his husband, suddenly terrified. What if it was all some trick by the witch? What if there’s nothing there? “I’m scared,” he whispers. 

Derek squeezes his hand. “Don’t be scared. I can still hear her heartbeat. We’ll be seeing her any minute. You’re doing so good, baby, so so good, and in just a second we’ll be meeting…” 

A shrill cry interrupts him and Deaton lifts up a tiny, blood-and-fluid covered baby. “Your daughter,” he says. 

Stiles bursts into tears. 

# 

The next few hours are all a blur. Deaton cleans and weighs her, and Scott comes in to say hello, and Stiles’s dad drives over in his sheriff’s car with the lights blazing so he can meet his granddaughter. Stiles can’t stop grinning dopily. Derek reluctantly hands the baby over to her visitors, but he hovers over everyone’s shoulder and gives unnecessary instructions like, “Support her neck,” and “Don’t drop her.” 

They don’t want to spend the first night with their baby in an animal clinic, so Deaton gives them the green-light to take her home when she’s about seven hours old. Stiles holds her all the way home while she naps in his arms. He thinks she has Derek’s nose. She’s already flashed blue eyes at them, much to Derek’s delight, and when Stiles puts his finger in her tiny palm she grips it tightly. Derek drives about five miles an hour all the way home but Stiles doesn’t mind. He feels like he wants to suck the marrow out of every second with his newborn, already mourning the fact that she has to grow up. 

“Welcome home, baby,” Derek says as he carefully pulls the car to a stop. They haven’t picked a name yet. Somehow it just hasn’t seemed like a priority. 

Stiles carries his daughter inside. The pack stopped by to leave some food in the fridge for them, but Stiles is more concerned with giving the baby her first meal. He sits at the table with her while Derek prepare her bottle, cooing at her when she opens her eyes and whines at the silence. 

“Daddy’s making you your milk,” he tells her, picking up her hand so he can marvel at her tiny fingers again. “Baba doesn’t have breasts, so you have to do it the slightly-less-popular way, but that’s okay. You are going to love this, little girl, it’s going to be so yummy, and it’ll make you all big and strong so you can be an Alpha like Daddy.” 

Derek comes over with the bottle and gives it to Stiles, only pouting a little at not being the first one to feed their daughter. The baby sucks immediately at the rubber nipple, making a pleased, wet noise at the taste. 

“Someone’s hungry,” Derek says. 

Stiles watches his baby drink. “I’m so in love,” he whispers. 

Derek leans his head on Stiles’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he says sincerely. “For making her possible.” 

# 

They put her down in her bassinet and Stiles falls asleep only moments later, completely exhausted. When he wakes up at his daughter’s cry it’s still dark outside, and he can hear Derek lifting the baby out of her bassinet. 

“Oh, I know,” he croons. “I know, it’s so dark, and you couldn’t hear Daddy or Baba, could you? Shh, don’t cry, Daddy’s got you. Do you need to be changed? No, that’s not it, is it? Do you want another bottle? You want more milk so you can be Daddy’s big strong girl? Here, grab Daddy’s finger again. Oh, yeah, that’s it. You are _so_ strong. You’re the strongest baby Daddy’s ever seen. That’s because your daddy is a werewolf and Baba is magic. Did you know you have a magic Baba? He’s sleeping right now, but he loves you so much, just like Daddy. You were in his belly for a _long_ time, do you remember that? Now Daddy finally gets to hold you. Daddy’s such a lucky guy.” The baby stops whimpering and makes a happy, sleepy little noise. Derek’s voice drops. “Oh, you stopped crying but Daddy doesn’t want to put you back down. You want to fall asleep in Daddy’s arms? You can do that. We won’t tell Baba that Daddy’s disrupting your sleep already.” 

“And yet Baba knows everything,” Stiles stage-whispers from the bed. 

Derek looks at him and grins sheepishly. “Scott wasn’t kidding. She _loves_ hearing us talk.” 

“And you’re a big softie.” 

“That too.” 

“Bring her over.” Stiles struggles to sit up in bed, having some trouble with his new center of gravity. Derek comes and sits next to him, leaning against Stiles so they can stare at their baby together. 

“Let’s have another one,” Derek whispers once she shuts her eyes. 

Stiles laughs, but he feels a tinge of sadness as he puts his hand over his belly. He could _feel_ the womb dissipate after the delivery, and he knows in his bones that it won’t come back. “She’s it,” he tells his husband. “There’s no magic left. She’s our one-and-only.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“I’m sure.” She was a one-time gift, he knows. It’s all right. He isn’t sad, not even a little, as he looks at his miracle 

“That’s all right,” Derek kisses him on his forehead. “I couldn’t ask for anything more than what I have right now.” 

Stiles nods in agreement and gently takes the baby from Derek. Someday, he thinks, they might adopt a second child. If there’s one thing he’s learned through this experience, it’s that love is stronger than blood. Love is stronger than anything, and their daughter is proof of it. 

“I want to name her Gemma,” he tells his husband. “After the Gemini. She made this all possible, after all.” 

“Gemma.” Derek tests out the name, placing one hand over the downy cap on his daughter’s head. “It sounds kind of like your real name.” 

Stiles nods. That wasn’t lost on him. It’s also a sort of tribute to Other-Stiles. Wherever he is, Stiles hopes he’s as happy as Stiles is in this world. He thinks he probably is. 

“It’s perfect,” Derek says. “Gemma. Our little treasure.” 

“I was thinking her middle name could be Corilania. It’s a little unusual, but it sounds kind of like a mix of Cora, Laura, and Talia.” 

Derek pauses before he answers, and his voice sounds suspiciously choked-up when he does. “Gemma Corilania Stilinski-Hale. I love it.” 

“Good.” Stiles brushes his finger over Gemma’s sleeping face. “We should probably put her back in her bassinet now.” 

“Let’s hold her for just one more minute.” 

Stiles smiles and nestles up against his husband. Derek puts one arm around Stiles and the other over his daughter. “My family,” he whispers. 

“My family.” Stiles closes his eyes and tips his head up. The witch probably can’t hear him, but he thinks, _thank you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote the first chapter of this story having literally no idea what it was going to be about. I think I planned to make it this angsty little story where Stiles met a pregnant teenager in the alternate reality and came back to his world and adopted her baby with Derek. That did NOT happen. I'm glad you guys enjoyed it through all the plot twists! Thanks all for reading!


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